(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)
by adlyb
Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all. Or, the one where Klaus gets Elena pregnant.
1. Chapter 1

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

A/N: I'm playing havoc on the timeline in seasons 3 & 4, so don't even try too hard to keep track y'all

* * *

Nothing Stefan does anymore should surprise her. She doesn't know why, then, she feels so _betrayed _by him using her to get even with Klaus, when he's made it perfectly clear he doesn't care about her anymore. Doesn't care about anything other than his petty, stupid revenge.

"Stefan has his reasons for what he's doing," Damon tells her, like his brother's swan dive off the deep end should excuse him using her as a pawn.

"He crossed a line."

Damon cups his hands around her face. Draws her into his gaze as though his blue eyes and soft lips will make her forget everything else. "We're _winning_, Elena."

"You've been keeping secrets from me."

He doesn't deny it.

* * *

A week has passed with nothing but silence filling the space that the Salvatores used to inhabit in her life. They're dodging her phone calls, both of them, and when she goes over to their house, it's always empty. She'd gone back to the old witch house on a hunch, and again, zilch. She'd been so certain she'd find them there, conspiring, and the fact that they're not makes her even more suspicious of them.

It shocks her how accustomed she had become to them always including her. To being the third spoke in their wheel. Somehow, she'd assumed that the three of them would keep on turning in that circle forever. That her life would be spent conspiring and conjecturing in front of their parlor fireplace, pressed up close and warm between the two brothers as they spun out increasingly elaborate schemes to keep everyone on their list alive for another day. As they invented victories out of impossible odds.

She never imagined that they would cut her out. Without warning, without even a conversation to tip her off.

That the two of them are plotting something together is completely obvious. She wants to slap them both. If she could find them.

What she's not prepared for is realizing that the rest of her friends are in on it too. Bonnie can't even look her in the eye anymore. Won't give her a straight answer about anything. Caroline just plain avoids her. And between his maybe-a-serial-killer new girlfriend and whatever research and sketchy recon she's _sure _Damon's asked of him, Alaric's never around.

And of course, Tyler is not really himself anymore, and Jeremy is just gone, and Matt doesn't want anything to do with anything supernatural if he can help it. Most days, that seems like it includes her, too.

* * *

Weeks pass. It's October between one blink and the next. The leaves turn yellow and orange but mostly brown and drift listlessly to the ground.

* * *

No one ever warns her anymore about what will happen to her if she has a Salvatore on both arms.

* * *

She can't even remember the last time the three of them were all in a room together.

* * *

She's so _sick _of it. Sick of this loneliness, this isolation. Sick of everyone she trusted shutting her out and not even telling her _why._

* * *

It must be a sickness, for her to do what she does next.

* * *

Matt works late on Mondays and Thursdays, and she's gotten into the habit of going to the Grill to do her homework in his section on those nights, just for the excuse to see a friendly (if somewhat aloof) face for a little while. Just for an excuse to forget about the dark, empty house awaiting her when she returns. Sometimes Matt feels like talking to her. More often he seems unhappy with her, but she's not entirely sure how to fix that. She doesn't know him well enough anymore to slip through his armor.

Maybe that's the problem. None of them know each other anymore as well as they used to.

She's there barely fifteen minutes before she senses someone slide into the booth across from her.

Damon or Stefan, ready at last to make an overture.

Excitement leaps in her breast, but she hastily smothers it, pretending not to feel it at all as she finishes a calculus problem. She won't give them the satisfaction of knowing how badly she yearns for them to accept her back into their confidence.

At length, Elena shuts her binder and looks up—

Directly into Klaus's intense blue gaze.

"Not the company you were expecting?" he drawls.

Elena glances around. No allies in sight. Matt must be in the back.

"What do you want?"

"Ah, straight to it. How refreshing." Klaus gives her a lazy smirk that menaces more than it puts at ease, folding his hands together and leaning across the table to lowly warn her, "Tell your boyfriends to leave off, or I'll be forced to retaliate."

He says it all like she knows exactly what he's talking about.

She doesn't.

Elena purses her lips. "You've come to the wrong person. Stefan and Damon no longer involve me in their schemes."

"Come now, you don't expect me to believe that."

She leans back and shrugs. "I don't care what you believe. It's the truth." She pulls her books back in front of her and begins work on the next set of problems.

Long minutes tick by.

Then—

"You truly aren't going to warn them then?"

"How can I?" she responds without looking up. "They've been stonewalling me for weeks. Everyone has."

"Why?"

"How should I know?"

"Perhaps it was because you brokered my sister's return? I don't picture anyone in your camp being particularly keen on surrendering such a prize for such small returns."

"Maybe." She's certainly had more than enough time to consider the opportunity.

"Or perhaps they've simply realized that you're irrelevant."

She snaps her books shut and shoves them in her backpack. "Don't you have someone else to threaten?"

"Oh! I touched a nerve."

"Yes, fine, you touched a nerve. I'm sure Stefan and Damon _are _up to something, but I really honestly couldn't tell you what it is, or who else is involved, because all of my friends are suddenly avoiding me, and I have no idea _why, _except that somehow, _you're _to blame. _You're _the reason my life has gone to hell in a handbasket. Why my boyfriend cares more about getting even with you than he does about me. Why I have to live completely alone, without any family at all, day after day, in this enormous, _empty _house, living an _empty _life."

"You're lonely."

The statement hits her like a sledgehammer to the chest. For some reason, it's very hard to breathe. All at once she becomes painfully aware of the tears pricking at her eyes.

Damnit, she _will not _cry in front of Klaus.

She focuses on very slowly zipping up her pack, the reassuring _zwoop_ of the teeth locking together.

"I can keep you company," he offers, astonishingly.

Elena pauses. "You're not serious."

"I am, perfectly."

"Why?"

"Because I understand a portion of the isolation you're feeling. It's why I wanted to make the hybrids. So as not to be alone anymore. It's a curse I wouldn't wish on anyone, least of all you."

"No, why would I want to spend time with you? I loathe you."

"Because this is the most exciting evening you've had in ages. And because of the way your heart skips a beat when I look at you."

"I'm not afraid of you."

"I never said you were."

She considers him. Considers the very, very insane leap she is about to make.

"Okay. Fine. Let's say we do hang out. You better buy me a drink."

That's the first time she really learns what Klaus's true smile looks like.

He's right. Now that he's pointed it out, she can feel the way he makes her heart stumble in her chest.

She thinks she might be in trouble.

* * *

There's no one around to tell her to stop.

* * *

A/N: Enjoy a little Christmas treat! Daily updates for as long as I can keep this going.


	2. Chapter 2

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

Klaus waves Matt—who has finally reappeared from the back— over to their table.

Her friend shoots her a concerned look when he arrives, and makes a discreet gesture with his thumbs—their shorthand for, _Do you need me to text for help? _

She shakes her head, just the barest twitch of her chin, hoping Matt catches it before Klaus demands his attention.

He has Matt bring them a bottle, and she can't help but feel abstracted from her body as she watches Klaus's strong, elegant hands pour amber liquor into her glass. This can't be real. None of this can possibly be real.

This isn't her who takes a sip, who suddenly feels warm for the first time since she awoke from her death last April when she catches Klaus watching her with a singular sort of focus that almost makes her think he _sees _her.

Because if this were real, then the _hunger_ she feels for this time out would be unthinkable. She'd have to feel guilty that Klaus is right, that the past half hour toeing the line of red hot danger with him has revived her flagging spirits in ways that she really, really doesn't want to analyze.

"On the bright side," Klaus says, cheerfully interrupting her thoughts, "I shan't have to warn the Salvatores away from you if they're already leaving you well enough alone."

"Why would you warn them away from me?"

"To ensure you have a normal life."

"I don't see how that's any of your business."

"Of course it is. You'll want to settle down, won't you? Stop consorting with vampires so you can go to college, become a nurse or a secretary or a school teacher? Get married? Have children?"

"You just want to make sure I continue on the Petrova line. That I live to see old age to keep your blood supply going for as long as possible while you wait for the next Petrova doppelganger."

"But doesn't my version sound so nice?"

Elena swirls the ice in her drink, listening to their gentle clink against her glass, considering. "What if I don't want a normal life?"

Klaus takes his time to respond. "Then I would say that you're both far more interesting and far more foolish than I had thought."

* * *

"So how _do_ you spend your time when you're not out menacing my friends?"

Klaus refills her drink, a smile on his lips. "How do you imagine I spend my time?"

"I don't. Imagine you, that is."

"That red stain on your cheeks says otherwise, sweetheart."

She wants to stop that line of inquiry as fast as she can because the terrible terrible thing that she doesn't ever ever ever even let herself think about is that he's not _wrong. _

"What do you even need an army of hybrids for? You're not conquering anything. You're just hanging out. They seem to mostly be doing your dry cleaning and watching over the construction on your new mansion."

"Which is nearly finished, by the way. Perhaps you'd like a tour."

She ignores that. "My point is, they're not really your friends, either. I don't think anyone is. There haven't been any attempts on my life, so I know you haven't awakened Rebekah yet." She squints at him, as though that will bring him into clearer focus. "You're not even planning to, are you? You don't have any family, or any friends at all. Just… these hybrids who are blindly bound to serve you."

At her words, all of Klaus's warmth and amusement slip away, like a cloak falling from his shoulders. Without any guile or bluster at all, he says, very quietly—so quietly she cannot help but lean closer into his space so she can hear him better—

"I told you I was lonely."

There's a new kind of intimacy that opens between them in the steady way he holds her gaze as he says the words that she had not absorbed as _truth_ until that moment. Not just as truth. As _his _truth.

For the first time, she thinks she might really understand him.

Might see herself mirrored in him.

That same hopeless loneliness that has sunk so far into her bones that she doesn't think she'll ever emerge from it also resides in him.

"So how do you fill the time?" she asks him helplessly. "How do you keep yourself going day after day? Keep yourself _caring?_"

"You have to find a way to live for yourself." He pauses, then—almost hesitating. "I paint. For me, that has been my salvation."

"You're an artist." She can't help the flat incredulity with which she states it.

"Don't sound so astonished."

"I'm not. I'm just— recalibrating."

* * *

"Why least of all me?" she asks later, when she feels brave enough.

"Hm?"

"Earlier. You said that loneliness is a curse you wouldn't wish on anyone, _least of all me_."

Klaus shrugs. "You've been exceedingly generous to me, over all. You came willingly to the sacrifice, you've given me blood whenever I've requested it, you were the only one with enough honor to return my sister to me. You even had the foresight to arrange for your resurrection after the ritual so you could help me create my hybrids. Besides all of those very persuasive points, I find your pluck… appealing."

The explanation unsettles her. It had never occurred to her before that Klaus might actually _like _her.

"You know I planned the attempt to take you out at Homecoming."

"Yes, and handed me one of the things I've wanted most these past thousand years. Brava."

"That doesn't bother you? That I tried to kill you?"

"It's a moot point, seeing as you now never can."

"Where there's a will, there's a way."

"You don't really mean that, though."

"How do you mean?"

"You wouldn't dream of killing me when you're enjoying my company so very much."

"You're flattering yourself."

Klaus watches her with dark eyes. "Am I?"

* * *

Matt comes back by their table at eleven. "We're closing," he tells them without preamble. "Elena, can I give you a ride home?" He's been nervously watching them for hours, hovering, but no one else has arrived to break their evening up, so he must have taken her word that she didn't need him to call in the cavalry.

"I'll see her home, thanks," Klaus cuts in before she can respond one way or another.

Except, outside, she tells him, "I don't want to go home."

"No?"

"If I go home, that means tonight has to end, and I'll have to go back to being on my own again."

"Then don't. Come home with me instead."

"That sounds like a terrible idea."

"I never said it wasn't. But think on it: We've established that you no longer number amongst the conspirators plotting against me, and that I wish for you to live a long and fruitful life. And I think that you rather enjoy my company. There is no reason for us not to spend our time together if we so wish."

She swallows. Thinks about going home to curl up in her cold and empty bed. That sickness opens up inside of her, an abyss with no bottom. If she goes home, she'll be plunging into that dark cavern inside of herself. She doesn't know how much longer she can bear to keep treading through this by herself.

"Is that tour still on the table?"

"I think something can be arranged."

* * *

A/N: Hurray for terrible life decisions!


	3. Chapter 3

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

The thing about being alone, truly alone, is that you can live in the most exquisitely beautiful and luxurious mansion, and it can still feel like a prison.

Klaus lives in the most exquisitely beautiful and luxurious mansion Elena has ever stepped foot in. Even the Lockwood mansion is put to shame by the rich materials and fine craftsmanship contained in the imposing compound that has sprung up faster than normal means could ever accomplish.

He leads her through marble foyers and halls, gorgeously paneled studies, an oak floored ballroom studded with mirrors and chandeliers. Galleries with black marble fireplaces and empty rooms she thinks must be intended for bedrooms. Everything is empty.

She feels very sad for him. Sad for herself, because this is where she's at: feeling sorry for Klaus.

"Why did you build all this?"

"I wanted a home for my family."

He doesn't say anything about undaggering them.

"Why don't you awaken any of them?" She doesn't actually want him to—she can barely calculate the ways in which that would invariably make her life a million times more complicated—but she can't help but ask.

"That's not possible right now."

"Why? Because of what they might say?"

He stares at her for a long time.

She tries to imagine what that would be like—to have her entire family near to hand, asleep, and to be so afraid of their rejection that she chose never to wake them up at all.

Insight curls through her, sharp and bright.

That's what lies at the bottom of Klaus's loneliness. Fear. A great deal of it.

"You really don't know," he marvels. "I keep expecting you to know, but they really have kept you out of it."

She frowns at him. "Kept me out of what?"

"It doesn't matter right now." He takes hold of her hand, and the contact shocks her through and through.

She lets him lead her through a pair of imposing double doors, into a part of the house that finally looks lived in—if only barely. At least it's furnished, and the opened crates in which she glimpses leather-bound books and statuettes and odd knick-knacks speak to the fact that Klaus really _has _moved in here. Really does plan to stay.

He hadn't been lying about the painting, either. She sees, tucked into a corner next to a huge table covered in bowls and plates and marble slabs slathered in dried pigment, several easels, each holding a painting in a different state of completion, and stacked behind those easels, several more paintings.

She can't help but desire to look at them.

Klaus draws her back. "Those are personal."

She looks up into his eyes. "I want to _see _you."

He opens his arms wide, indicating himself. "Look your fill."

"No—I want to see who you are when you're not performing the role of someone else's villain. I want to see who you are when you're just you." This might be the most brazen thing she's ever said to him.

"Careful. I never claimed I wasn't still a villain when no one is watching me."

"But you're _more_ than just that, aren't you."

He opens his mouth as though to respond, but then thinks better of it. He turns away from her, then, and, pausing for only a moment at the doorway to glance back at her from over his shoulder, leaves her alone in the room.

She thinks she hears him say, almost more to himself than to her, "As you are more than just a pretty face."

* * *

It's the closest to a blessing as she is likely ever to receive from him.

She could spend ages trying to analyze his motives for leaving her alone to sift through his work—his _salvation_, he had called it—instead of overseeing the process—which, until just now, she would have assumed he would have preferred.

She thinks this has something to do with that new strange intimacy that had sprung up between them at the Grill. That although he may extend her the trust, at least in this moment, to look through his private thoughts spilled out on canvas, he cannot bear to watch her reaction. Not when he has let her in past his shield, to see how similar they really are.

_But it's him who's done this to you. It's him who's murdered your family and threatened Jeremy and severed your friendships with just the hope of his demise. It's him who's made you like him. _

Elena takes a long time to look through his work. This morning, she wouldn't have bothered. Now, the paintings spellbind her.

Looking through Klaus's paintings feels like wielding the kind of power that the Salvatores had stripped from her when they cut her out. It's a heady thing, picking through an immortal creature's art, filling the hungry cavern inside herself up with these fragments of his soul. Her blood thrums with the thrill of it, her body waking up, _remembering._

* * *

Later, she slips through the house in a daze. Goes room to room until she finds him, ensconced in a black leather sofa, staring sightlessly into a crackling fire in the hearth, a fresh drink seemingly forgotten in his hand.

Elena sits down next to him. It feels like taking her rightful place.

"Satisfied?" he asks her, finishing his drink in one long swallow.

"Yes."

He doesn't ask her anything about what she thought of his artwork.

Instead, he says, "It hardly seems fair that you should see so clearly inside my head, when you've not offered me anything remotely the same."

"Are you asking to read my diary?"

His eyes sweep over her, lingering on her mouth, her throat. He can probably hear the way her heart speeds and trips as their eyes catch.

"Tell me a secret about yourself you wouldn't dare commit to paper."

Elena's mouth falls open. Maybe it's the way the flickering light of the flames catches Klaus's face, triggering her most visceral of memories. Maybe it's the alcohol, still swimming hot in her blood. Or perhaps, simply, it's that Klaus has found her in a moment of weakness, and lured her through the happiest hours she has had in months, and the result is that when he asks, she surrenders the only possible answer.

"You asked me what I imagine, when I think of you. I dream about your bite. About that night. I can't get it out of my head." Her voice is rough with longing by the end.

Klaus stares at her for long seconds. His lips part, and, drawn by the slight movement, she glances down—Klaus notices.

It's that moment, small as it is, that is her undoing.

Between one breath and the next he surges forward, cupping his hands around her face to pull her into a searing kiss. A terribly amazing, bone-melting, desperate kiss that she really, really should end _right this second_. Except that then Klaus tilts her face _just so_, deepening the kiss, and his fingers stroke along her jaw, trailing their way down to the scars he left on her last spring, and every thought she ever ever had promptly flies right out of her head.

Klaus kisses her like a drowning man fighting to hold onto a slim branch even as the rapids sweep him away. He kisses her like she's all that matters. Like she's the only thing that can save him. He kisses her, and she _knows _that he'll never forget her.

When he scoops her up, carrying her bridal style into his bedroom, she never even thinks to tell him to stop, to slow down. If he does, she'll be lost.

Everything happens so quickly. His mouth on her makes her feel desperate, insane with the need to feel his body pressed against hers. She doesn't remember when she lost her shirt, or how she got his belt unbuckled or his shirt over his head—she barely registers the sound of her jeans and panties ripping at the waist in their hurry to get them off of her. All she can think about is the feeling of his hands, mapping her body, of his mouth as he presses his kisses into her throat, her breasts, her eager mouth.

It somehow shocks her when he enters her, and for a moment, she remembers who she is supposed to be with a dazzlingly sharp clarity that sends shivers rolling down her spine. She can't be doing this. She can't. She can't.

"Stay with me," Klaus murmurs in her ear. He wraps his arms under her shoulders and hauls her closer, so that the whole scorching length of his body is pressed against hers. He rests his forehead against hers. "Stay here, with me."

She wants to. Oh God, she wants to.

The urge to roll her hips, to feel the pleasure only that slick friction can provide, nearly overwhelms her.

And—

and—

She can feel his heart beating against her own. Can feel him inside of her, hot and full. Waiting.

Here with her.

It's that, that breaks her, in the end.

Urgently, Elena searches out his mouth again and draws him to her, winding her hands through his hair and wrapping her legs around his hips, entwining their bodies as completely as she can.

It must be the sign Klaus had been waiting for.

Shallowly, carefully, he begins to move within her, his mouth brushing against her own all the while.

Slowly, they search out a rhythm together. Her whole world narrows to the feeling of Klaus laboring between her thighs, of the slippery slide of his cock, re-entering her again and again, of the delicious drag against her inner walls as he thrusts himself inside of her. She cannot help but try to chase that feeling, to roll her hips and groan as her body fights to keep him inside of her.

Her whole body hums with desire. Sweat slicks her skin, practically glues her against him. Pleasure bubbles and fizzes in her veins.

And she is close—so _close_—

One of Klaus's hands slips down, briefly caressing her thigh before circling over her clit, tender and swollen with need. Clever fingers coax her higher, out onto a precipice with a very long, terrible fall. Elena thrills to his touch, even as it frightens her. Her thighs tighten around him, heedless of the way her encouragement only makes him buck harder into her. She'll have bruises dotting her thighs and hips like an obscene necklace when she awakens.

Klaus pulls his mouth away from hers and trails kisses down the side of her throat. She's so distracted by the maddening way he strokes and circles her clit that she doesn't feel the elongation of his fangs against her throat until he bites her, directly over the scar he'd given her last year.

Elena's vision whites out. Her body clamps down around his cock and she might actually scream—she doesn't know.

Everything gets obliterated under the battering ram of the orgasm tearing through her body. Under the feeling of his teeth piercing her skin, of her blood leaping into his mouth.

* * *

In the days that follow, as the details start to come back to her, she'll conclude that it must have been the taste of her blood that ultimately does it for him—the illicit thrill of revisiting their fateful night together—because he comes after only three pulls from her throat.

* * *

Elena falls asleep in Klaus's bed, tangled up in his embrace.

It's a simple sort of happiness, to hold and to be held.

* * *

She's alone when she wakes up.

It's late—almost 8 in the morning—there's no way she'll make it to school before second period.

She gathers her clothes and struggles into her ruined jeans in a total haze, functioning on harried autopilot as her mind shies away from analyzing the previous night in too much detail.

That can wait. She's bound to run into Klaus sooner rather than later. They can talk it out then. Figure out what it meant. If it meant anything. She's not sure. This is the first time she's slept with someone she wasn't in love with. With someone who wasn't her boyfriend.

* * *

She checks her phone on the way out the door.

A calendar notification reminds her that today is Caroline's birthday.

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading. Who wants to bet Caroline's birthday is going to go over super not well?


	4. Chapter 4

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

Planning Caroline's birthday party is just barely enough to distract Elena from the much much much more consuming desire to fixate on the night before.

She should be disgusted with herself. Fourth period already, and the guilt should be eating away at her by now.

It's not. She feels fine… Normal, in a way that she hasn't for weeks and weeks and weeks now.

Maybe she's in shock, she reasons. She's gone and crossed a line she should never ever ever have crossed, now that she's slept with her aunt's murderer and her own personal demon determined to haunt her for the rest of her life, and the emotional backlash of selfishly acting on her desperation for connection with _anyone_, even Klaus, has stunned her too much for her feelings to have caught up to her yet.

She refuses to consider the alternative, because if those feelings never arise… then that will mean something about herself that she's not yet ready to face.

* * *

_(Just as she'd predicted, the night before lives on in her body in the way her muscles groan when she stands or fidgets in her desk seat, in the smear of deepening bruises staining her inner thighs and hips. _

_Klaus had played her body with an expert's exacting finesse. She hates to consider precisely how he seemed to know exactly how to touch her so as to render her senseless with pleasure, but she can't help but dwell on the memory of him between her legs, touching her, filling her, consuming her. _

_Whenever her mind wanders back to the sensations he'd wrung from her, her stomach twists and a needy twinge pulses between her legs. Her whole face heats to what must be a glaring red, and she can't help but shift her hips under her desk in sheer frustration. Twice, she has to excuse herself from class before anyone can catch on to how flustered she really is.)_

* * *

One thing that she cannot deny is that she is happy to have a secret. It makes it easier, somehow, to pass notes with Bonnie and Matt about tonight and pretend everything is okay when it so obviously isn't, when she, in turn, is keeping something from them.

* * *

They end up throwing Caroline a funeral.

Surrounded by the friends who have so purposefully been keeping her in the dark, Elena feels a strange mixture of happiness and alienation. On the one hand, it feels so _good _to be with them again. To take this time to just be a teenager having fun, even if that now means ritually saying goodbye to Caroline's old life so that they can celebrate her life as a vampire. That all tracks in Elena's mind, somehow. But on the other hand… On the other hand, the whole time she is with them, there is this little voice inside her head whispering that they don't trust her.

That they've been pushing her out because they think she'll screw this up. Have pushed her out because she's a loose cannon.

And they're right.

She's sure whatever they're planning is some grand scheme to take down Klaus.

She's no longer sure she wants that.

No longer sure she won't stand in their way.

Not for the first time, she checks her phone, just to be certain she hasn't received anything from Klaus. Not that she really thinks that she will, after he was absent this morning. But still. It's not like it's a big town. And it's not like he doesn't factor her into all of his plans in one way or another. (If she's being honest with herself, she _likes _that he so consciously includes her when he's writing the equations for his future. She never would have noticed that if her friends hadn't excluded her.) Eventually, they're going to run into each other, or he's going to need her for something, and they're going to have to talk.

"Will the two of you put your phones down for just a minute?" Bonnie asks, startling Elena into tucking her phone back into her pocket. She frowns. "Who are you two even texting?"

Caroline bites her lip, looks anywhere but into any of their faces. "No one."

"Care, you're a terrible liar, and an even worse one when you've been drinking."

She actually blushes, just a little, and the misty smile that curls over her mouth is the same one that secured her her the Miss Mystic Falls crown. "It's Tyler, okay? I can't help it, I miss him. And it's my birthday."

This, luckily, is an explosive (if predictable) enough response that Bonnie forgets to ever ask Elena who she had been hoping to hear from. She claims a headache and storms out just before Tyler joins them.

* * *

It's all downhill from there.

* * *

"So what was that last night with Klaus?" Matt asks her, as soon as Caroline and Tyler leave to hash out their romantic drama.

Elena fiddles with the label on the tequila bottle. That's the million dollar question, isn't it?

"He was just bored, I guess. He wanted someone to pass the time with."

"You left with him."

"If letting him drive me home keeps him too occupied to dole out any commands to his hybrids or threaten any of our friends, then I'm happy to do it." She tears the label off and folds the strip into smaller and smaller squares. "It's not like he'd ever lay a finger on me."

"He's a bad guy, Elena. Don't forget that."

"I never have."

But he's _more _than that. Now that she's seen that, she doesn't think she can ever _unsee _it.

* * *

More fool her.

* * *

They give Caroline and Tyler fifteen more minutes before they head out in search of them.

They find them just in time to witness Tyler sink his teeth into Caroline's shoulder.

There's hardly time to react. The horror and the confusion in that moment turn everything on its side. Make everything dim and faint.

Elena races over to Caroline's side and pulls her hyperventilating friend into her arms. She just vaguely registers Matt shoving Tyler out of the way, and that Tyler lets him. The way Matt looks at him like he's broken his heart.

"It's okay," she tells Caroline. "It's okay. Klaus can cure you."

"Why would he?" she gasps into her shaking hands. "Why would he even care?"

"I'll ask him. I'll get him to do it. I swear."

Behind her, she hears Tyler laugh—a high, thin laugh, bordering on hysteria. "Why would he? He's the one who ordered me to bite her."

Elena looks up, into Tyler's wild eyes. Very carefully, she asks him, "When did he ask you to do that? A while ago?" She holds her breath. Hopes.

Tyler shakes his head. "No, this morning."

Elena's stomach drops into her feet like a block of ice.

He did this. She'd held him close to her, opened up her body to him _(her heart)_, and he'd slithered out of her embrace and planned her friend's attack.

Every fantasy and stray thought she'd entertained about him comes rushing back in on her.

She'd hardly had time for more than a precursory rinse this morning. His sweat is probably still dried to her skin.

She's going to throw up.

Tyler continues, totally oblivious. "I told him I wouldn't—I refused, Care, you have to believe me—I would never hurt you!"

"You just did," she says, pulling out of Elena's arms.

"I'm taking you home, Care," Matt interjects, over a second impassioned plea from Tyler.

"I have to make a phone call," Elena tells them. No one seems to hear her. She steps away, into the dark shadows of the wood, and lets the moonlight guide her over the rough terrain until the fraught voices of her friends fade to an indistinct murmur on the wind.

She has to talk to him. Has to know.

Gathering herself, she pulls up Klaus's phone number. Hits dial.

Stefan grabs her before he picks up.

* * *

A/N: Thanks for your patience over the holidays. As I mentioned over on tumblr, I vastly underestimated how busy I would be while visiting family last week—didn't have nearly the time I thought I would to write! No matter, chapter 5 is already complete and I'll have that posted soon as well :)


	5. Chapter 5

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

The love of her life drags her through the worst thing that ever happened to her like she means nothing to him. Like she really is just the means to Klaus's end.

All she can think as Stefan punches the accelerator, the metallic taste of his blood still cloying in her mouth, is that somehow, she is not worth as much to him alive as Klaus is worth to him dead.

Seconds later, she's reminded that she's not worth as much to Klaus dead as she is to him alive.

She's not prepared for how hurt she is to discover that, even after last night, nothing has really changed.

She really is just a girl alone.

* * *

After— after Klaus has caved and saved her life, after she has told the one person she used to trust the most to stay away from her and _meant it_, after she has brushed past Damon, waiting for her on her front porch with empty platitudes yet again—she seeks Klaus out at his big empty mansion.

She'd had a long time to think on her solitary walk home from the bridge.

He doesn't seem the least little bit surprised to see her when she barrels through his front door three hours after he hung up from Stefan before even bothering to find out if she was actually alright, satisfied merely to ascertain that she would survive as a human.

She's not alright. Can no longer remember what alright even looks like.

"You should go home," he tells her immediately, when she storms up into his studio and interrupts his painting. "You look a bit strained by this evening's events."

"Not until we talk."

He puts down his paint brushes and turns to face her. Leans back against his palette table and crosses his arms over his chest. "Is this the part where you ask about last night?" he asks her lightly. "What it meant, and what you are to me?" He gives her a knowing look before turning back to his painting, dismissing her without even waiting for her answer. "It was a good time, nothing more, sweetheart. Something to pass the time. Don't make it out to be something that it wasn't."

She'd known he was a coward. Realized that he'd crept out of bed this morning because he must have found himself unable to face her in the morning, after he'd let her in, after he'd let her see him just a little bit, but _this—_

_(Maybe that's what immortality really did to you. Made dying so abstract that you never learned to live with the primal fear of death, let alone the other fears that everyone else learned to bear up under—heartbreak, rejection, and abandonment. To experience those things is to _live._ But he had neither truly lived nor died in a thousand years, caught instead in that vampiric half-life.) _

Whatever. She's had hours to think about this, and she'd known, before she'd ever stepped foot in here tonight, which tack Klaus would take with her. All that time it had taken her to get home had given her the space to smother whatever spark of excitement, of empathy, that Klaus had ignited in her the night before. To clear her head.

As always, Elena is here to make a deal.

"I'm not here to talk about last night."

This causes him to pause. Just the slightest hesitation as he drags a brush across his canvas. He cocks his head without looking to her.

"To what, then, do I owe this occasion?" Something in his tone alerts her: he's displeased that she's brushed off their night together as cavalierly as he had just done. He hadn't been prepared for her to be able to play at his table.

"You ordered Tyler to bite Caroline."

"So I did."

"Why?"

"I wanted to remind that merry gang of wayward assassins that they live on my sufferance."

Not so long ago, he might have called it _her _merry gang of wayward assassins.

She pushes the wave of sadness that thought brings with it to the side.

"So it was a warning." She takes a deep breath. Steals a step closer. "You could cure her."

"I could, were I so inclined."

"What would it take, to persuade you?"

"Nothing you can offer me."

She's close now. She can feel the way he tenses as she places a hand on his arm. Tries to draw his sympathy to her. Sympathy she _knows _he has, somewhere. "Please, Klaus. She's my best friend. I'm begging you."

"Bold of you to assume I care." He never takes his eyes off his painting, like Caroline's life really means so little to him.

She really really really would dearly love to drive a dagger through his heart right now, and she _would_, she totally would, if she didn't need his help so very badly.

"Why this morning?" she finally snaps. "Why not order Tyler to do this weeks ago? What made today special?"

Klaus selects a palette knife and drags it over a section of the painting, scraping paint away under its edge. Hardly paying any attention to the conversation. "What makes any morning any more remarkable than the last, when you've experienced over a millennium of them?"

"You did it because you let me in last night," she declares, rolling right over his infuriating response. "You let me see a part of you that you'd prefer to keep secret, and you regretted it in the morning. I get it. We can go back to being enemies. Keep things just as they were before. I won't bother you. Just, please, leave Caroline out of this."

He turns around to face her again, and gives her a long, cold stare. "She's the one who's chosen to involve herself. If she dies, she'll have no one but herself to blame. And I really think it would be wise if you followed your own advice and removed yourself from this affair entirely. You'll live longer." He doesn't say a word about her offer to stay clear of him.

"I can't do that. I can't just walk away."

"Your so-called friends have abandoned you to whatever your fate may be. Why fret over theirs?"

"Because I love them, Klaus. There's no turning your back on the people you love."

"Isn't there?"

"Have you really never loved anyone at all?"

"Don't presume to know me."

"Then prove me wrong. Please."

He shakes his head. "I told you I was the villain of the piece. I cannot help it if you did not listen."

* * *

Elena trudges home in a state of total defeat.

She crawls into bed, her mind racing with how she can acquire a phial of Klaus's blood in the next 48 hours or so.

She'd promised Caroline she'd find a way to save her.

It all feels so hopeless.

* * *

There's a part of her that knows, that night, even if she isn't ready to acknowledge it yet, that she's going to have to find a way to put him down. That even if she saves Caroline tomorrow, it's still only a matter of time before he sets his sights on Damon or Stefan or Matt, and that there's no telling whether he'll choose mercy or wanton bloodshed when that time comes. It won't matter, then, how he'd made her feel warm and wanted and excited for the first time in ages, or how his honest smile had lit up his face and made her heart skip a beat. It won't matter that, for a few hours, they had come so terribly close to achieving a sort of uncomplicated happiness, of a sort that she hadn't really thought could exist anymore for her. None of it will matter at all. Nothing she feels really seems to matter anymore. Just the question of whether she is living or whether she is dead, and whether Klaus lives or dies.

* * *

In the morning, Caroline calls. Klaus had swept in out of the blue and cured her. Wished her a happy birthday.

* * *

Later, he'll tell her that he hadn't done it for her.

* * *

A/N: welcome to the pain train :)


	6. Chapter 6

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

She interprets his curing Caroline as a tacit agreement to the terms she had offered. She would pretend that night never happened, and go back to treating him with the same wary distance as she had before.

* * *

She does.

* * *

It's easier than she had thought it would be.

* * *

When Tyler up and leaves without a word to anyone, it's Bonnie's shoulder Caroline cries on.

It's obvious this is Klaus's fault—that Tyler's either running from what Klaus forced him to do, or worse, that Klaus has sent him on some dark secret mission bound to end in bloodshed— but she never hears Caroline blame Klaus even once.

That's fine.

Elena can blame him enough for the both of them.

* * *

At night, she tosses and turns, wrestling with her memories of that night. Forcing herself to forget what his mouth on her had felt like, to repress the weight of his body. To push out the illicit spark of power she'd felt, looking through his most personal expressions of self. The sick-exciting feeling of confessing her most guarded secret to him, the rush that had felt like the moment when you first leap from a very great height, and your body is still arcing up and up and up, before the inevitable fall.

She doesn't know why a few hours of foolish abandon could leave such a mark on her, when there are entire weeks she spent with Stefan that she can hardly even remember.

* * *

During the day, she never lets herself think about that night at all.

* * *

October slips into a cold, wet November.

The days are very short now, and the nights are long.

* * *

She stops visiting the Grill to do her homework. Stops bothering to ask Bonnie and Caroline what they are doing after school, too restless to listen to any more excuses.

After the incident on the bridge, she avoids the Salvatores altogether.

* * *

Bonnie goes on a trip to find her mother, taking Damon along with her.

She finds out about it later, when they return with Abby Bennett in tow, without any explanations asked or given.

* * *

Sometimes, she calls Jeremy, just to check up on him. Most of the time, he doesn't pick up. He's joined the baseball team at his new school, and between sports practice and a new circle of friends, he's too busy to spend too much time talking to the sister he's been compelled not to worry over.

* * *

That had been one of her stipulations. That Jeremy wouldn't worry.

* * *

She considers, in an abstract way, whether Damon would do the same for her if she showed up on his door step.

It's not a fantasy she can ever make true.

If she doesn't worry, doesn't keep a sharp eye trained on her friends, then they'll get themselves killed.

Not that they notice she is watching their backs.

They're too busy planning a murder.

* * *

She lets them.

* * *

Her life settles into a routine again, loathe as she is to admit it.

School and the dull necessity of eating and breathing and sleeping, of brushing her hair and washing her face and doing her laundry, take their toll.

* * *

Slowly but surely, Klaus stops frequenting her dreams.

She hardly ever sees him, and he seems content to give her as wide a berth as possible. They haven't even spoken since that night she begged him to save Caroline.

Some days, she forgets that those stolen hours together ever happened.

* * *

She should have suspected that something would inevitably happen to break her uneasy, monotonous peace.

* * *

The house is dark just like every other night. She doesn't even bother to turn on the lights before stumbling toward the kitchen, which is how she manages to trip over Alaric, bleeding to death in the front hall.

There's no one there to help her. No one but herself to save him.

* * *

The knife pierces his heart, and Alaric screams, and Elena grits her teeth through the déjà vu stirred up by driving a blade between the ribs of someone who trusted her.

* * *

After, she sits on the front steps. Her hands are bloody up to the wrists, the knees of her jeans and the front of her shirt soaked through with it.

She'd left Alaric slumped where he died. He'd been too heavy to move by herself, and she'd been too much of a wreck to do more than leave him and wait for him to revive. She's not entirely certain that he will. Not really sure that she had connected the dots the right way when she'd surmised that a death at her hands would count as supernatural.

She may have just murdered the last bit of family she has left.

More than anything, she wants someone to hold her in their arms and tell her it will be alright. To tell her she'd done the right thing. The only thing.

It's a moment of weakness, but she can't help herself. She fumbles her phone from her pocket, heedless of the red stain she leaves on the keys, and dials Damon.

The phone rings and rings and rings. He doesn't pick up.

* * *

Alaric does awaken, finally, late the next morning.

It's a hollow victory, with his blood dried on her hands.

Neither of them ever talk about the incident again.

He stops sleeping over after that. Drops the pretense of playing guardian for her altogether.

She does try to bring the killer up when she spots Damon and Bonnie conferring in urgent whispers in the school parking lot, but they bottle up as soon as she draws near, and don't pay her too much mind. She can hear them resume their whispering as soon as she's out of earshot.

* * *

Rebekah tries to kill her one night in the CVS parking lot. Only Elijah fortuitously swooping in out of the blue to throw his sister off of her saves her life.

"How are you here?" she asks, her voice rough from the still-yet invisible bruises Rebekah had left when she crushed her throat.

Elijah raises an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you hadn't heard. Your Damon Salvatore was the one to reawaken me." He pauses. Offers her a wicked half-smile that thrills a part of her she had thought was dead. "Though, I must confess, the last time I awoke from my enchanted sleep, it was to a much lovelier face."

"I had nothing to do with this," she tells him, regret threading through her words. She would have liked to be the one to wake him up.

Suddenly she cannot help but wonder how different the past few months would have played out if he had been here. If they could have worked through her problems with him, the way she had last year. They'd been a formidable team, once.

"And he's not really _my_ Damon Salvatore at all, anymore," she adds. "I don't really have anything to do with them lately."

"I doubt either of the Salvatores see it that way. They both speak of you as though you are their primary concern."

She can't hear this right now. The idea that they still dare to speak for her after everything they have and haven't done simultaneously infuriates her and leaves her sick with longing for them.

They still care.

Just—not in the way that she needs.

Elena shakes her head to clear it. "Let's not talk about them. Tell me about you. Tell me what's going on. Please."

He regards her with dark, penetrating eyes, deeper and older than eternity. "Very well," he murmurs. "I suppose I must start from the very beginning."

When he offers her his arm, she takes it without hesitating. Lets him lead her away from her car, so they can stroll through the empty late night streets together.

* * *

Eventually, he pieces together for her why everyone has been so cagey around her.

Klaus's elusive comments about his siblings make a lot more sense when she discovers that the Salvatores had been suicidal enough to steal Klaus's entire family out from under him, and that Bonnie and Caroline had been _aiding _them.

Somehow, they'd lost possession of the coffins, but not before managing to reanimate the entirety of the Original Family. Including Klaus's witch of a mother.

* * *

All of them confronting him at once. That must have been his worst nightmare.

* * *

Elijah walks her to her door, but doesn't press to come in. Even now, he is a gentleman. From his jacket, he produces a heavy envelope with her name scrawled across the front in flourishing script.

"What's this?" she asks as she delicately thumbs open the wax seal on the back.

The smile Elijah bestows on her is so soft and gentle. The opposite of his brother's.

"It's an invitation. My mother is throwing a ball."

* * *

A/N: Lol 3 updates in one day. I have no chill. But hopefully am making up some for some lost time over the hols.

Umm this is still heading in the direction I've said it is. Just apparently I had things to say first, because I'm not capable of writing a short little fic. Thanks for reading.


	7. Chapter 7

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

The doors sweep open, and the room seems to hush and go still, just for a moment, to watch Elena Gilbert delicately step past the threshold in a shimmer of sequins and hand-stitched beading.

She hasn't stepped foot in this mansion since the night of Caroline's birthday. Has avoided thinking about it.

It is, she notes, no longer empty at all.

* * *

She's there only moments before she has both of the Salvatores materializing at her side.

"Why are _you _here?" Damon hisses at her.

Elena gives him a long look. "I was invited."

"You should go," Stefan says without looking at her.

She follows the line of his gaze to where it is settled firmly on the back of a familiar head of dark blond hair.

She ignores the way her stomach knots when she spots him.

"I don't see why. I've only just arrived."

"You don't understand what's at stake tonight," Damon insists. "You'll get hurt if you stick around."

"No, I understand completely. Elijah told me last night, after he stopped Rebekah from tearing my throat out. You thought you'd found a weapon against Klaus, and instead you just handed him back his loving and forgiving witch mother." She pats his arm. "You're here for damage control, but you don't have any leverage to keep Klaus from killing you. Does that sum it up?"

Damon's eyes narrow. Reads the resolve in her face. Her ambition. "No. We're not talking about this. We're not using you for _leverage_."

She slips past him, out onto the dance floor. Over her shoulder, she calls, "I never said _you _were."

* * *

Elena knows an opportunity when she sees one.

That there will be one, tonight, eventually, is inevitable. There always is, at parties like this.

She just has to _find _it.

* * *

She thinks she has it.

* * *

And so she dances. Catches a bewildering glimpse of Matt with Rebekah, only to shove the sharp spike of anxiety the sight of him _here_, in the lion's den, produces down down down until she can't feel it.

There are no shortage of dance partners for her. There are enough town dignitaries here who know her by name, enough suave favorite sons who teased her when she was a child but cannot take her eyes off of her now, that she has a new vaguely familiar partner at every turn.

And then, of course, there is Elijah.

He, also, cannot take his eyes off of her.

Hope quivers in her breast when he asks her for a dance.

She had hoped for this, as she sat in front of her mirror, staring into her reflection.

His hands are so very gentle as he leads her through a complicated pattern of steps. He touches her as though he is holding a delicate bird in his hands and fears crushing it between his fingers.

Elena's not delicate, but she doesn't mind being perceived as such by him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the Salvatores on opposite ends of the room, both of them watching her as the pattern of the dance twirls her across the ballroom. They're positively glued to her every move, both of them, and the knowledge fills her with a vicious exultance.

"I'm glad you're back," she tells him, affecting a shyness she doesn't really feel. "Klaus needs someone to balance his worst impulses." To keep him from murdering her friends.

Surely, Elijah's honor must compel him to do that much for her, after he betrayed her last spring. The idea had come to her last night, as she held the fine invitation in her hand, that Elijah is just the ally she had been waiting for. Just the person strong enough to save the Salvatores from their own snares. He _owed _her that.

Except, Elijah looks away from her, a familiar expression playing over his face. Guilt. "I don't plan to stay. I'm merely here until everything in my family is… settled."

"You're leaving?" She can't keep the disappointment out of her voice. "You're just—going to walk away, and let Klaus have his free rein over me, over my whole town?"

He frowns at her. "I cannot possibly stay. Niklaus and I do not get along as we once did. We do not… see our purposes similarly enough to co-exist in harmony."

"You know how he's using me, right? For my blood? How he's held my friends and family hostage against me?"

"My brother has always been difficult."

"You won't even try to stop him."

He doesn't deny it.

An immense disappointment in Elijah shudders through her. He's really no different than he was last spring, when he'd spared Klaus's life after she'd already gone through with her end of the bargain and died for the sake of their scheme.

Jenna had died for nothing. John.

Slowly, bit by bit, Klaus has taken everything else from her. Her lover, her brother, the trust and confidence of her friends. All because Elijah had this weakness for him.

The music lulls, and the both of them are saved from having to say another word to each other by a new partner stealing her away, swinging her abruptly into the next dance—an intimate waltz.

She looks up into Klaus's stormy expression.

* * *

She had hoped to wring a promise from Elijah tonight and be done with it. Hoped that it could be so simple as that.

She had hoped to avoid Klaus altogether.

* * *

She doesn't account for her body's reaction to him—for the way her blood pounds and her breath hitches when he takes her into his arms, for the surge of adrenaline in her veins that accompanies a spike of something else, something primal—fear, or attraction. Maybe both.

* * *

Klaus glares at her. "Is your presence here an attempt to garner my attention?"

"Hardly. Elijah invited me. I enjoy his company."

The hand resting against her waist tightens, for just a fraction of an instant, before loosening again to a normal grip. He offers her a cold, sharp-toothed smile that does nothing to dampen the burning in his gaze. "My brother ever was susceptible to a familiar, pretty face."

Alarm bells scream in her ears. She has to get out of this as quickly as possible. Get back on track.

"Are you jealous?" It's the last question she should be asking. One she cannot stop herself from asking.

She came here to find a way to save the Salvatores from Klaus's wrath, but it seems like she's incapable of reining herself in around Klaus.

"Why should I be? I've already tasted you. Twice."

"You haven't answered my question."

He gathers her closer. "You think very highly of yourself."

She glances around the room. At her power to pin every eye to her as though she is the lone star shining bright in the night sky.

It's an unnatural power. One she's only recently begun to notice that she wields. It's the sole outward sign of her status as a supernatural being, and on nights like tonight, when she does nothing to diminish herself, instead doing everything that she can to amplify her charms—

Tonight, even Klaus cannot help but try to gather up some of her starlight.

She tilts her face back, so that their mouths are very close. The long cascade of her hair over her shoulder hides the bite scars he's left on her neck, but she can see the way his eyes drift down, to the hidden soft skin of her throat, as though drawn by a magnet.

The memory of his bite fissures through her again.

"You cured Caroline for me," she breathes.

He brushes her hair away from her shoulder. Touches a trailing finger to the column of her throat. "I didn't do it for you."

"No?"

Klaus drops his hand. "I thought we were agreed you were to stay out of these functions." There's a current of anger in his words.

Elena remembers herself.

"I'm a founding daughter of this town. The last of the Gilberts, thanks to you. If you really want to establish yourself in Mystic Falls, you'll have to get used to my presence at society events."

He studies her. "What's the real reason you're here tonight? Did you hope to strike another bargain with me? I can tell you, I'm not in the mood to hear you out."

"Believe it or not, I'm not here to seek you out at all. I was actually hoping to get through the night without even having to say a word to you." The lie comes so easily to her lips that she nearly believes it. She's been lying to herself every day about Klaus for so long that reality and fantasy are starting to blend inseparably together in her mind. In her heart. There are days and days at a time when that night between them really does slip her memory altogether. "Remember, _you're _the one who came to me. Not the other way around."

"Only to offer you a word of warning: do not try to intervene in my dealings with the Salvatore brothers. Even my patience for you has its limits, useful as you are."

"What are you planning to do to them?"

He smiles at her. "Something spectacular, I should think."

* * *

She stumbles out of Klaus's arms and hides herself away in an oak-paneled study until she can get herself under control.

_Something spectacular. _

She knows Klaus well enough to know what that means.

* * *

She'd been such an idiot, to show up here, bedecked in this ridiculous ball gown, and expect that she could flutter her eyelashes and flirt and somehow pull a victory out of _nothing_, when she has been pushed off the playing board for months now.

Of course no one will bother to negotiate with her. Klaus doesn't care about her, not really, and the Salvatores have apparently all but sworn her off. Any hope she'd felt by Elijah's reentry into this sick cat-and-mouse murder game everyone has been playing all year had been well and truly smothered by his words tonight.

* * *

It feels like a miracle, then, when one of Klaus's brothers—Finn—finds her, and explains that his mother is eager for an audience with her—alone.

* * *

Esther bargains that with just a drop of Elena's blood, she can condemn all of her children to the grave. A drop of her blood, for all of their deaths.

The price is very dear.

* * *

She doesn't know Finn or Kol. She might pity Rebekah, but she's not blind. She sees the way that she's looked at her since her awakening, and knows that she will be coming for her throat again at the first opportunity.

But Elijah. She feels the weight of his death as a physical pang.

She has always wanted him to be her white knight, and she thinks there is a part of him that has always regretted that he has never been able to be that for her. Now he never will be.

* * *

Her heart rebels against thinking on Klaus for too long.

She has known for weeks now that she would have to find a way to kill him once and for all before he could destroy even a single person more on her list.

She just hadn't been prepared for that night to be tonight.

If only she'd never spoken to him that night, this decision would be so easy. If only she had never grasped something integral about him—never seen beneath the lies he projects with every double-edged smile.

* * *

They are both solitary creatures, doomed in their own ways.

* * *

She had never thought to find her mirror in him.

* * *

She is a doppelganger. She must kill all of her reflections if she wants to be the one to live.

* * *

If she wants anyone she loves to live, for that matter.

* * *

Sometimes, she feels like her daring is the only thing standing between any of them and the abyss.

* * *

She pricks her own finger, and watches the blood drip ruby into Esther's goblet.

* * *

Elijah stops her in the hall, and she lies as easily as breathing.

At the champagne toast, she even smiles for him as she watches him drink down his death.

She catches Klaus's eye across the room. Watching them. He hasn't taken a sip from his flute yet.

Elena raises her glass in his direction and nods.

Slowly, Klaus raises the glass to his lips, and drinks.

* * *

"So are we going to talk about why you're really here?" Stefan asks her as she accepts a second flute of champagne from a passing caterer.

The dancing has recommenced, by now, and although she has received several offers, she cannot bring herself to join them. What she's done still sits too heavily inside of her, a stone of guilt as she watches Elijah laugh with his mother.

She purposefully doesn't look for Klaus at all.

Elena takes a sip and lets the bubbles fizz in her mouth, tilts her glass and takes her time before responding. "I'm not blind, Stefan. I've known you and Damon were up to something for months."

"Your involvement would have ruined us. You make Damon weak."

"Just Damon?"

He ignores the jibe. "What's the plan, Elena?"

She takes another sip. "Who ever said there was one?"

"I can't help you if you don't tell me."

She spots Caroline tip-toeing into the party from across the room, swathed in a brilliant blue gown strewn with delicate crystals. A diamond bracelet Elena's never seen before glitters on her wrist.

"You brought _Caroline _here?" She's furious. It's one thing for the Salvatores to insist on running headlong into danger, but it's unacceptable for them to constantly endanger Caroline and Bonnie by involving them.

"This wasn't me."

A moment later, as she spies Klaus crossing the room to Caroline, attention riveted to her friend the way he had been riveted to her while they danced, she believes Stefan. Terribly, terribly, she believes him.

_I didn't do it for you._

She can't watch this.

"Let's take a walk, Stefan."

* * *

Damon catches up to them outside.

She tells them what she's done.

Damon's furious, of course, but Stefan appraises her with new eyes.

* * *

"You're different," he tells her, later, as they say goodnight on her front porch. "Stronger."

She kisses him on the mouth, and he doesn't pull away.

* * *

That night isn't like every other night they passed together last year. He's different with her, distant from her even when he's inside of her. She's distant, too.

They've grown cold over the past year. Starved for warmth, but unable to give it to each other.

* * *

He's gone when she wakes up, but she doesn't mind.

She showers, drinks a mug of black coffee, and heads straight to the Salvatore house.

Damon pauses when he sees her, but makes room for her on the sofa. It feels, for an shimmering moment, as though she has never left this space between the two of them.

They light the fire to keep out the chill, and they lay their plans.

* * *

A/N: thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

Of course, nothing ever goes to plan.

Elijah kidnaps her, trapping her deep underground with Rebekah, and by the end of the day, Abby Bennett is a vampire and Klaus is still very much alive.

* * *

Her hair smells like gasoline for days afterwards. No matter how many times she washes it, she cannot purge the smell of it from her skin.

The sharp scent of it roils queasily in her gut.

* * *

Stefan doesn't say anything about it when he comes to her at night.

His silence makes her worry that it's all in her head.

* * *

And yet, the incident drives home the truth for her, in ways that had sometimes felt difficult to grasp onto: She had been right to do all she could to strike Klaus down.

She chants it to herself, a catechism that drives away her unease whenever her mind brushes against _that night._

* * *

Bonnie leaves town to take care of her transitioning mother, taking Caroline with her.

Neither of them will answer her calls. It hurts—it always hurts, how no matter what, she ends up being the one pushed out—but maybe it hurts a little bit less now that the Salvatores have decided to let her back in.

At some point, the Boarding House began to feel more like home than the empty white house she grew up in.

* * *

It takes her days and days to realize that Klaus has gone, too.

* * *

Sometimes, she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks that if she concentrates hard enough, she can feel her blood moving inside of them. Linking her to each of the Originals. Tying her to Klaus.

It's a fantasy, of course. She can't feel anything at all.

* * *

Despite the darkness in Stefan's eyes, the hunger with which his mouth maps her body, breathing in the scent of her skin at the base of her throat and the inside of her thigh like an addict, she isn't afraid of him.

She's so far past that now.

* * *

"You're back together with my brother," Damon notes one afternoon.

That's a strong word for what they've really been doing—trying to wring some sense of comfort out of each other, clinging desperately to the last shreds of a past they shared, lest they both tumble into the abyss alone.

Despite the nonchalant way he says it, Elena knows that deep down, he's hurt that she's chosen Stefan over him. Except, she hasn't. Not really. If she were to do with Damon what she's currently doing with Stefan, it would be something entirely different. It wouldn't be huddling for warmth; it would be building a fire.

When she doesn't respond, he continues, "He's stopped drinking human blood."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"If he falls off the wagon and you're the closest live blood source near to hand, it will be. I prefer your pretty head attached to your body."

She considers his words seriously. "I could feed him my blood, just a little bit every day, like last year."

"Not good enough."

His phone rings, interrupting them.

Alaric's been arrested for murder.

* * *

Damon insists he and Stefan need a brothers' day out while they fruitlessly brainstorm the identity of the real killer, and no one will answer her phone calls or her texts—even Matt tells her, stubbornly, that he has a shift tonight, since he actually has to _work _for a living—so it's up to her to break into Meredith Fell's apartment by herself and figure out why she's framing Alaric.

* * *

On her way home, she stumbles across Stefan and Damon feeding on some poor woman in an alley.

Both brothers freeze.

Stefan looks at her like he's waiting for her to strike out at him. Damon, with narrowed eyes, like he's waiting for a self-righteous accusation.

She doesn't have the wherewithal to push them away right now.

Without either blessing or condemning them, she walks away.

* * *

The next day, she turns up at their house as though the scene in the alley had never happened.

She's been reading Samantha Gilbert's journal, and the Salvatores have been investigating Rebekah's suspicious interest in their family's lumber business, the mystery of the killer promptly shunted to the side upon Alaric's release.

It's then that she discovers that Damon has a new friend. A redheaded vampire named Sage that Elena takes an immediate disliking to.

* * *

It's a confusing time.

Alaric is sick with some supernatural affliction that no one else other than Meredith Fell seems overly worried about, and Damon has that look in his eyes like he's planning something catastrophic.

* * *

She walks in on Damon one night, naked and wrapped only in a low slung towel, burning a thick ledger in the parlor fireplace. An equally disheveled Sage lounges in Elena's favorite place on the leather sofa, wearing a sated little smirk like a cat that's ate the canary _and _drank all of the cream. She intuits from their brief exchange that Rebekah is asleep upstairs in Damon's bed, fucked into blissful oblivion.

Red hot anger potently mixed with hurt lashes over her as she stands awkwardly in the doorway—feelings which she ruthlessly crushes until her heart feels as blank as her expression.

It's not her place to feel this way about Damon.

Not her place to be upset that there are other girls _here_, invited to conspire with him.

Sage brushes past her, giving her a lascivious once-over before making her way upstairs.

When Damon catches sight of her, it's clear that none of her efforts to control and smother her true feelings have been successful. He raises a dark, knowing brow at her before telling her, "It's a school night. Isn't it past your bedtime?"

* * *

When she gets home, she finds Meredith Fell dead in her bathroom.

* * *

She moves the body herself. Buries her in the woods where no one will find her. Damon's taught her _that much_, over the years.

The past few months have taught her how to do it alone.

It's only later, as she's stomping the mud from her boots and scrubbing the dirt from beneath her nails, that it occurs to her that the Salvatores probably _would _have answered if she'd called them about this. That they would probably want to know that Alaric's serial killer alter-ego is still a threat, even without him wearing his ring.

* * *

She never questions why her first instinct had been to protect Alaric rather than calling Sheriff Forbes.

* * *

She's wakes up sick the next morning. Not surprising. Even she has her limits.

* * *

"Alaric's killing again," she announces when she arrives at the Boarding House, at the same time as Damon announces with wicked glee, "Guess who found a secret stash of white oak?"

* * *

She has another piece of news.

She'd spotted Klaus crossing the town green with Rebekah and Finn that morning.

* * *

They find Alaric at his loft, bleary eyed and confused. No memory of skewering his girlfriend with one of her stainless steel kitchen knives.

With reluctance, and at Alaric's insistence, Damon agrees to lock him in the Salvatore dungeon while they handle the more urgent matter of the stakes.

The Salvatores call a meeting in the woods. It's the first time Elena's seen Caroline, much less heard from her, since Damon turned Bonnie's mother. It hurts, a little bit, that Caroline will come for Damon's summons and won't even text her back.

Even Matt shows up, despite his loudly proclaimed desire to stay out of the supernatural.

There is a brief mention of Bonnie not showing up, but that's quickly swept aside when they drop the bag of freshly whittled stakes down in front of everyone. The sight of all of those impossible weapons fills her with a surge of unbridled hope. _A lot _of hope. When Klaus is dead, she'll be able to put this entire time in her life behind her. She'll be able to stop struggling with herself.

That's why she's so startled when Caroline whines, "Why do I always have to be Klaus bait?"

"Because he's _obsessed _with you," Damon says, like it's a fact that everyone just knows about.

Elena stares hard at her circle of fellow conspirers. No one looks the least bit surprised by Damon's assessment. Everyone _does _know about this.

With everything else that's happened, that moment she'd glimpsed between Caroline and Klaus the night of the ball had slipped her mind completely.

She's not prepared for the dark wash of ugly emotions that rises within her as she realizes that, during all those weeks she had been cut out, something had apparently been growing between Caroline and Klaus without her notice.

It's just another example of all of the myriad ways she had been abandoned and pushed to the side of the road, and it shouldn't upset her the way that it does.

Klaus fixating on Caroline is a hell of a lot less personal than her various maneuvers to put him in the ground.

It doesn't stop it from feeling that way.

* * *

They do kill an Original, in the end. Just not the one she had hoped to.

An hour later, she has the satisfaction of watching Sage bleed out and shrivel up on the Salvatore's Oriental rug.

* * *

Bonnie calls her in tears, adding another tally against Klaus.

* * *

"You were jealous of Sage," Stefan notes, that night, from between her thighs.

Her whole body feels tender to the touch, especially her chest. She'd landed hard when Sage had shoved her. She expects she'll find bruises coming up by morning.

"Why would I be jealous?"

He regards her heavily, his chin resting at the crease between her thigh and her hip. "It's my fault," he says at last. "I don't blame you."

She shifts away from him to sit up. "Let's not talk about this."

"How much longer do you think we can keep not talking about how you're in love with Damon as well as with me?"

His words twist inside of her. She can't confirm or deny any of them. Doesn't know why.

* * *

The next day, she and Damon leave for Denver to collect Jeremy, and, hopefully, to find out who the originator of Rose's line had been.

* * *

She can't explain what possesses her to kiss him on the motel balcony that night, as though in kissing him she could draw his spirit and his conviction into herself, as though his fire could cleanse her of the fog within her heart.

It's the same reckless hunger for a _time-out _that urges her to draw him closer, to hook her fingers into his belt and let him push down her pajama pants, to haul her up and wrap her legs around his waist so he can fuck her against that hotel pillar, out in the open, where anyone at all could see her.

Damon rocks into her slowly, only freezing when he is fully seated inside of her, as though only in that moment realizing what they have done, how fast they've raced past any definition of right or wrong. He looks at her, and she can see in his wide-eyed gaze and unsteady, hitching breaths the way that his love for her utterly devastates him, leaves him bare and defenseless to her, slowly but surely destroying him until nothing is left but _her_ inside of _him_.

She wants to consume him. To eat his heart, in hopes of understanding her own.

* * *

Nothing is any clearer in the morning.

* * *

They find a new home for Jeremy, somewhere harder for Klaus to find, and Damon compels for him a new life. A safer life.

* * *

No one tells her not to do it. No one is left to draw the lines for her.

* * *

She's sick again on the way home. The guilt is driving her body to reject nourishment, to punish itself. The guilt, or the stress of constantly running and scheming and bargaining for her life, for the lives of everyone she loves, of living so constantly in the shadow of unnatural death.

She's looked it up online. This isn't an uncommon symptom. Lots of people respond like this.

At least, in this, she is normal.

* * *

Both Damon and Stefan avoid her, after Denver.

* * *

She goes to the Decades Dance stag, and watches from the periphery of the room as her friends dance and enjoy themselves.

She's not alone for very long. Klaus appears at her side like an apparition, hair slicked back, a distant, easy smirk on his face that she remembers so well from last spring, and asks her to dance. Reluctantly, she takes his hand, hating the way she trembles when he touches her.

"I thought you'd rather be dancing with Caroline," she tells him.

"I would."

"Then why bother ruining my night?"

"You didn't take my advice."

"Which bit?"

"The bit about staying clear of the Salvatores and their little plots."

"They perform better when I'm there to supervise."

"I don't understand why you insist on trying to kill me. It's growing tedious."

"You're the one forcing my hand. Every time you threaten or hurt someone I love, you're forcing me."

He considers her, head tilted to the side. "You don't sound like your heart is very in it."

"There are some who would say I don't have a heart."

This draws a _real_ smile from him. She's dreamt about that smile. She hates how it makes her feel.

"I've been accused of much the same."

"Why are you here?" she asks, redirecting the conversation.

"My sister begged me to come, and I was hoping for a chance to speak with Caroline."

"Why bother me then?"

"Because I'm leaving town tomorrow."

She pulls out of his grasp, and he lets her. She's dreaded this moment, this threat hanging over her head, for months now. "I'm not leaving with you."

"I don't want you to."

This deflates her. "Oh. Why are we having this conversation, then?"

"Because we're going to come to a new arrangement. I'll be sending a nurse to take your blood every three months. I plan to leave a contingent of hybrids behind to watch over you. If they should wind up dismembered or missing, I shall be very displeased."

"Fine. Is that it?"

He studies her, hard. "Yes."

She watches as he interrupts Caroline and Tyler, before deciding even she isn't enough of a martyr to stick around for this.

* * *

Naturally, she's immediately kidnapped by Esther, so her blood can serve as the key ingredient in a dark ritual to turn Alaric into another Original vampire, only to be saved in the last instant from participating by Damon and Stefan bursting into the tomb.

Damon breaks Alaric's neck, but not before Esther flees with the white oak stake imbued with the powers of the Gilbert ring.

* * *

After, she stands in the empty crypt with Damon and Stefan, Alaric's body crumpled and broken on the ground. She wants to look anywhere else than at Alaric's blank-eyed stare, his poor twisted neck.

She cannot look away.

And it's worse, because Damon won't speak to her and Stefan won't look at her, neither of them have since Denver, but it's all worse now than ever, so much heavier, and yet, she stays. She stays.

Later, after they've dug Alaric's grave in bursting silence, she follows them back to the Boarding House like a lost little ghost, and the three of them pile onto the sofa.

Damon won't speak to her and Stefan won't look at her but they speak and look at each other, tense little statements and searching, significant looks between brothers. She refuses to abandon them, even now.

And when the three of them fall into that familiar pattern on the sofa, they both cling to her, her boys, her vampires, burrowing into her sides with needy, clinging hands and swarming, starveling mouths. She stays with them both all night long.

In the morning, something has shifted between them, but she doesn't understand what it is until it's too late.

* * *

They leave town together without saying goodbye to her.

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading. CHRISTMAS CHAPTERS START NEXT CHAPTER WOOT.


	9. Chapter 9

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

Everyone looks at her like they expect the Salvatores abandoning her to destroy her.

It doesn't.

Elena's grown accustomed, over these past 18 months, to losing the ones she loves the most. To being the one who remains. The one left behind.

* * *

She keeps all of the grief inside of herself, bottled tightly, lest she fall apart completely. Caroline shoots her worried glances over Alaric's grave, and no one dares bring up the two missing from the funeral, or what part Elena may have had in driving them away.

If she feels grief for Damon or Stefan, for the place in between them that had felt like home, she doesn't let herself show it.

* * *

She would be lying if she said that Stefan and Damon leaving town doesn't simplify her life.

* * *

That doesn't mean she doesn't _miss_ them.

* * *

Doesn't mean she's not thinking of them, always. Wondering.

* * *

Doesn't mean they haven't broken her heart.

* * *

Grief makes her tired, irritable. Sometimes her whole body feels like one steady ache. She finds herself no longer able to stomach so many foods. She's still sick often, a psychosomatic response to the trauma of the past few months that she's determined to ride out.

* * *

Life goes on. Homework, meetings with her college counselor, the bills she's suddenly completely responsible for… a million little things that keep her distracted, keep her breathing one moment to the next.

Autumn slowly dissolves into a gray, foggy winter, and Christmas lights start to pop up all over town.

* * *

She feels the turn of the season and feels the weight of her mortality.

Fifty years could pass and she could be old and gray before either of them decide to roll back into town.

* * *

One of Klaus's hybrids—a girl whose name Elena can't remember—rings the doorbell.

When Elena answers it, there's a nurse waiting to take her blood.

* * *

Slowly, Caroline and Bonnie begin talking to her again. Without any Originals to scheme against or witches to battle—without Damon and Stefan actively campaigning to push her out of their circle—her two oldest friends take her back into their confidence. Never about anything big, of course. There's nothing big going on. Just… life. Tests and boys and compulsory shopping trips and school planning committees and occasional awkward pleasantries with her hybrid sentries.

Even Matt begins to smile at her again, and Elena resumes her old habit of going to the Grill twice a week to do her homework.

* * *

During the day, everything almost feels back to normal.

* * *

And then, she comes home for the night.

Her house feels bigger and emptier than ever. It echoes with a vast, overwhelming quiet that rings in her ears.

This, she thinks, is the sound of a Klaus-free life.

* * *

She almost wishes he would come back, just for something to keep her mind off of how truly alone she is.

* * *

Wishes are dangerous things. Make them, and inevitably they'll come true, one way or another.

* * *

Tyler roars back into town like a hurricane, bringing with him a group of werewolves he met on his travels while he overcame his sire bond and a blazing ambition to save the rest of the hybrids from Klaus's control.

She notices him in the bleachers, tensely discussing _something _with her hybrid bodyguard of the week, one afternoon while she jogs around the school track.

After the hybrid—Jason, she thinks, or maybe Jake—has left, she catches up to Tyler before he can disappear.

"You're recruiting," she begins without preamble.

"Yeah. Obviously."

"What's the point? Klaus isn't even here anymore."

"You really think he'll stay gone forever?"

"Why not? He's got no reason to come back."

"He's left most of his hybrids here in town. Why would he do that if he weren't ever planning to come back?"

Elena stops in her tracks. "What?"

Tyler raises an eyebrow. "You didn't know?"

"No. I thought it was just the couple he'd left to watch over me."

Tyler shakes his head. "See—that's the problem. What's he doing _watching over you_? Like he has the right." He takes a deep breath. "Look, the way I see it is this. I was the first of Klaus's unlucky hybrids, and the first to break the sire bond. It's my job to try to save the rest. You get that, right?"

Elena stares hard at him, taking his measure. He could forget about all of this. Choose to be happy with Caroline and finish out his senior year without any of these responsibilities weighing him down. But he could never do that, any more than she could, if she were in his place.

* * *

She's being paranoid, she's sure, but she winds up at Klaus's mansion that night. Spends ten long minutes parked out front before she musters up the nerve to trespass.

And it _is _trespassing. She has to smash a window with a rock to break in. She's actually a bit surprised to find there's no security system—but then, it would never occur to Klaus that he would have to protect himself against anything.

Elena eases in through the window and wanders through the house, body tensed, senses straining.

She's not sure what she expects to find. Just… something. Some hint that what Tyler had said was true. That Klaus really does plan to return.

She drifts through the halls, up the stairs. Pauses in the threshold to Klaus's bedroom, caught in a reverie, before catching herself and hurrying from the room.

There's nothing here. This place is as much a mausoleum to the departed as the place where she falls to sleep each night.

* * *

She's too sick to make it to school the next day. Caroline brings her her homework, but she doesn't stay long. Too much to handle with Tyler intent on stirring up trouble.

* * *

She's sick a lot after that.

* * *

December comes around, and with it, the specter of exams merely weeks away, college applications due before the end of the month, and a potential hybrid revolution set to erupt at any moment. As though all of those things are not enough, she's finally started to wonder if it's not just anxiety making her ill after all.

It's been a few weeks, maybe longer, that she's been sick and achy, and the possibility that she's actually come down with the stomach flu or some other illness has finally become too hard to ignore. She drags herself to an urgent care center, hoping there'll be an easy solution.

"No temperature," the nurse remarks, tucking the thermometer into a drawer and confirming what Elena already knew. "How long have symptoms been occurring?"

Elena bites her lip. "A few weeks now, off and on?"

"Any change to your diet? New foods of any sort?"

She shakes her head. She's practically been living on black coffee and dry toast for weeks now. Hasn't had the appetite or the energy for anything more daunting than that.

"Any other symptoms?"

"I've been headachy, I guess. Tired."

The nurse pauses. Asks, very delicately, "Any chance you may be pregnant?"

Elena actually laughs.

The nurse waits, pen hovering expectantly over her clipboard.

Realizing she's supposed to give an answer, Elena pulls herself together and assures her, "No, no possible way."

Not when the only guys she's sleeping with have been undead since the Civil War.

"Are you sexually active?"

"Well… yeah. Or—I was."

"What birth control are you on?"

"…None."

At this, the nurse, launches into a well-rehearsed spiel on contraceptives that Elena mostly tunes out, before eventually winding back to the symptoms for which Elena came in.

"With the symptoms you're describing, I'd recommend a pregnancy test, if even only to take that possibility off the table. I can run a flu test too, just to see if you have any of the common strains going around right now."

"Just the flu test," Elena says, definitive.

* * *

It comes back negative.

* * *

_Any chance you may be pregnant? _

The idea of it sticks in her mind. Impossible to brush off, in the dark permeating silence of her room, with only the swooping circle of her thoughts for company.

* * *

Of course, there's absolutely zero chance that she is.

Pregnant, that is.

That would be… absurd.

* * *

Elena tosses and turns for what feels like _hours _before she finally gives up. Drags her laptop up off the floor and runs a google search for the symptoms.

It's like a mudslide from there. Catastrophic damage to her sense of reality as she notes the symptoms, recalls how out of sorts she's been physically. Her aversion to so many of her favorite foods, the vomiting, the aching chest she'd attributed to getting shoved by a vampire but which has never really subsided, the headaches, the exhaustion.

She snaps the laptop shut. Throws open her journal, ripping through the pages, until she finds the last note in the calendar marking the beginning of her last period, sometime in September. She's been so preoccupied she hadn't even noticed.

* * *

_No no no no no._

* * *

She's being _crazy_.

* * *

There's only one way to prove to herself that everything is fine. That she's just having one of those neurotic middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks, that will seem completely bonkers in the morning.

Elena pulls an overcoat over her pajamas and drives over to the 24/7 CVS, where Rebekah had nearly killed her six weeks ago.

Half an hour later, locked in her bathroom, she feels like an idiot, waiting for the test result.

She snatches the test stick up off the sink the second her timer goes off. Stares in total incredulity at the false positive.

* * *

She takes the test three more times, each time expecting it to read negative.

Every single one of them trumpets the inconceivable.

* * *

Elena wanders across the town square in a daze.

She'd left the house before dawn, and had been walking ever since, trying to wrap her mind around this.

It wasn't possible for _four _tests to be wrong, was it?

No. Definitely not.

Except, this just _isn't _possible. Neither Stefan nor Damon could father children. She's positive of that. No vampire could. And they were the only possible—

She freezes, her mind skittering over _that night_ again, before barreling over it, brushing it aside. Same problem as with Damon and Stefan.

A car blares its horn at her, startling her out of the street. She'd been so preoccupied, she'd wandered halfway across without noticing. Could so easily have been struck dead.

Regaining a sense of her surroundings, her heart hammering in her throat from the near miss, Elena looks straight up into the town's nativity display.

Tentatively, she rests her hand against her flat stomach.

Does she really believe that there's a life in there?

There's no possible father, just… these symptoms she can't explain. These symptoms, and a creeping certainty about this which she cannot suppress.

She stares hard at the nativity scene before her. At the vivid reminder of another young girl, inexplicably carrying a child with… dare she think it… supernatural origins?

That could be it. This could be supernatural. A doppelganger thing, maybe. Some mystical failsafe to carry on her bloodline, with or without a human father to contribute.

She's heard of crazier things before.

* * *

She goes back to the urgent care, where they confirm the news: She really is going to have a baby.

* * *

It's terrible timing. A huge problem in the making. It's probably going to complicate her life _forever. _

But, despite all of those completely rational thoughts running through her mind, Elena cannot suppress the thrill of real happiness that courses through her at the prospect of this unexpected miracle.

It seems, somehow, against all odds, that she won't be alone for much longer after all.

* * *

A/N: Finally! She knows!


	10. Chapter 10

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

"What do you mean you're _pregnant?_" Caroline gasps the next morning, dropping her mug with a clatter and a splash onto Elena's kitchen counter.

She'd invited Caroline and Bonnie over for Saturday morning coffee on the pretense of planning some Christmas shopping before working on exam outlines. She can be honest enough with herself to admit that it feels good to be here in this warm kitchen with the cool wintery early-morning light streaming in through the French doors and her two best friends gathered close to her again. It feels like old times.

It feels like the end of her exile.

Elena pours a new cup for Caroline and passes it over along with a dish towel to clean up the mess. "Well, I was having all of these weird symptoms and feeling awful, so I went in to the urgent care, and one thing led to another, and I ended up taking a pregnancy test. It came back positive." She tells them all of this very factually, suppressing the urge to smile with supreme effort. This is all dramatic enough as it is. They'd flip if they caught even a _whiff_ that she was actually happy about this.

Scratch that.

Secretly _thrilled_.

"That can't be right," Bonnie says, leaning heavily on her elbows and staring hard at Elena, like she could see under her skin straight into the truth of the matter. "It must've been a false positive."

"I took four tests, Bon. And they confirmed it with a blood panel."

Caroline narrows her eyes at her. "Who's the father?"

"There isn't one."

"No, seriously. Who did you sleep with?"

Elena sits down at one of the breakfast bar stools, and motions for them to do the same. As calmly and reasonably as she can, she tells them, "The reason I don't think there's a father is because I haven't slept with anyone alive since I broke up with Matt. It's just been Stefan… and one time with Damon." At Caroline's appalled expression and Bonnie's long-suffering sigh, Elena holds up a hand to forestall any questioning. "Let's not get side-tracked on my terrible decision-making over the past few months, okay? That's not the point. The point… is that I think this pregnancy is supernatural. Like, a doppelganger thing, maybe." She knows even as she says it that this is kind of a big leap, but it's the _only _explanation. And when all plausible explanations are ruled out…

Bonnie drums her fingers against the counter. "Is there any chance you were compelled? That this could be a normal pregnancy, and maybe _someone _preferred for you to forget making the love connection with someone nice and normal?"

"Damon wouldn't."

Caroline rolls her eyes. "_Please_, there's nothing Damon _wouldn't_ do. You all _do _remember what he did to me, right?"

"I wasn't compelled," Elena tells them firmly, preferring not to swim into those waters just now. She just can't. It's too muddy in her head, and Damon's probably gone for good anyway. "I've been on vervain ever since my necklace was taken."

Bonnie frowns and holds a hand out toward Elena before freezing mid-motion. "Can I feel?" she asks, after a short hesitation. "If it really is supernatural, maybe I can get a read on it."

Elena agrees, and holds her breath while Bonnie presses her palm to her stomach.

"You really are pregnant," Bonnie says after a moment, surprise coloring her voice. She shifts her hand over Elena's belly and focuses, her frown deepening as the minutes lengthen.

"Well?" Caroline asks, hovering at Elena's shoulder. "Anything?"

"There is something… strange," Bonnie admits after a moment. "Something… out of tune with Nature." She pulls back, absently rubbing at her hand and staring hard at Elena's stomach. "How far along did you say you were?"

Something like fear unfurls in Elena's chest. "A couple of months. Is there something… _wrong?"_ Catastrophic possibilities race through her mind. Already, the urge to protect her child, this little thing that's barely more than an idea right now, which she's only even known existed for a little more than a day, surges bright and hot within her.

Bonnie shakes her head. "No, not wrong. Just—off. Strange."

"Maybe that's to be expected if this really is a magical pregnancy," Caroline offers, before Elena's fears can gallop ahead of her. "How are you taking this? You must be so freaked out."

Elena wraps her arms around herself. Around the child growing within her. Pushes all of her worries down, down, down. Caroline's probably right. She has to be. Elena tries hard to focus on Caroline's question. "After the initial shock?" she muses. "Pretty well, actually. It's… unexpected, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't daunted by the idea of actually having the baby—"

"So that's it?" Bonnie breaks in. "You're keeping it, no questions asked, no options weighed?"

"Yeah, basically."

"What about college? A career? How are you going to raise this baby on your own? Or afford it?"

"I guess that's the perk of everyone in your family dying horrible, premature deaths," Elena snaps, instantly rebuking herself for her tone. She'd invited them here to make nice, not to pick a fight. If she's going to go through with this pregnancy, she's going to _need _them. Already she needs them, if Bonnie's comments about the baby being "out of tune with Nature" are anything to go by.

Calming herself, she explains, "I've been left the bulk of the Gilbert fortune, including all of John's assets, as well as life insurance pay-outs. I can make this work."

"But do you want to?" Bonnie presses. "Just because this might be supernatural doesn't mean you have to go through with this."

"Bonnie's right, Elena," Caroline adds. "We'll support you, no matter what—"

"Because this isn't like the sacrifice, Elena," Bonnie continues. "I know you get it in your head sometimes that you're fated to go through with these things because you're a Petrova doppelganger, and everyone puts all of their expectations on you because of that, but _this isn't the sacrifice_. You can say no, for your own sake."

Bonnie's vehemence takes her aback. She hadn't expected Bonnie to object so strongly to her having this baby.

Hadn't expected Bonnie to care so passionately about what happened to her.

She takes a deep breath. Shares the first real truth amongst the three of them that anyone's offered in months. "It's not like that. I _am _doing this for myself. After everything that's happened this past year and a half, after all of the people I've lost… the idea of having this baby feels _right_. It feels like the first hopeful thing that's happened to me since I found out my face wasn't entirely my own. So… I _am _going through with this. But I could really use some support from my best friends. So… will you?"

Bonnie softens, and gathers her up into a hug. "Of course. Of course I will. I'll do some research, too, see if I can find anything more on supernatural pregnancies."

Thank God.

She had hoped, of course, that Bonnie would offer to help figure this out. That she'd step in and help Elena find an answer about the baby, and whether she had anything to worry about. This morning had only highlighted how essential Bonnie's help would be.

Caroline, of course, cannot resist joining the group hug.

For a second, Elena forgets whatever motives she might have had in inviting them over. In sharing her secret with them.

She closes her eyes and pretends that she's somewhere back in time. That she still trusts these two girls with her heart the way that she used to. That they trust her not to break their hearts first.

_It's so good to have them here,_ she thinks, _gathered close, in this bright, warm kitchen, where nothing bad has ever happened or ever will happen._

"Oh, guys! It's like a Christmas miracle," Caroline declares, sounding oddly wistful—almost as though her thoughts have taken the same track as Elena's. Then, as though trying to clear away the mistiness in her eyes, Caroline pulls back and asks, "Does it count if you're not a virgin, though?"

* * *

A/N: Please review if you are enjoying this little project! You all keep me writing, even when life gets super hectic out of the blue! xoxo


	11. Chapter 11

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

The three of them become close again, after that morning confession. Bonnie spends her free time pouring over her Grams's old library of supernatural texts, searching for anything that might explain the life steadily growing within Elena. Caroline, too, finds ways to help—she blusters into her house the morning after their meeting with bags of groceries and jars of vitamins, and a stern admonition that she needs to start eating properly and taking care of herself, or, if not, then at least let _her _take care of her. They even both go with her to her first official prenatal appointment (where the doctor informs her that everything so far looks absolutely normal).

It's the most attention either of them have given her in months.

Part of her thinks that the only reason she's been able to seize their attention in this way is that the Salvatores are both gone. That this is possible only because she no longer has to work against their seductive persuasions and addictive plot hatching just to get Bonnie and Caroline to slow down for a moment and listen to her.

The other part is certain that no, this has nothing to do with either of her exes—that this newfound camaraderie has everything to do with the power of keeping a secret together.

And it _is _a secret.

Right away, the three of them had decided that the best thing would be to keep this quiet for as long as possible. Beyond the supernatural complications, the idea of facing the questions and small-town gossip is just too much. For that reason, she's never told Matt, and Caroline has sworn not to mention anything to Tyler. Even Jeremy doesn't know.

She's still vaguely hopeful that she'll somehow be able to hide this with some baggy clothing until graduation.

"One: I get that no one wants to feel like the teenaged-mom cautionary tale, but why are you so eager to be a fashion victim?" Caroline asks as they sit together after school in Alaric's old classroom, assembling enormous paper snowflakes for the Winter Wonderland festival coming up in just a couple of weeks. "And two," she continues, before Elena can respond, "Aren't you more worried about Klaus finding out?"

Elena shrugs. "How would he? My bodyguards have mostly stopped tagging after me ever since Tyler started trying to sell them on their freedom. I've only seen them like twice this week."

"It won't be long, though, before any vampire or hybrid within 30 feet will be able to tell you're pregnant right away. If they can't already. And that's even if you somehow manage to disguise the bump."

"What? You can _sense it?_"

"Now that I'm looking for it, I can hear the baby's heartbeat. I feel like an idiot for not noticing _that_. And…" She cocks her head like a bird's and considers her. "You smell different. Tangier."

Elena places a guarded hand over her belly. "Great, so I'm going to be a walking, talking advertisement for _What's Happening to My Body! _I was really hoping to keep this a secret for a while longer."

"If you're worried about Klaus coming back and being weird, don't," Caroline hurries to reassure her. "Tyler's really making headway with the hybrids. I don't think any of them are going to be sired to him for that much longer— If we can keep them distracted from reporting on you for just a few more weeks, you'll be in the free and clear, I promise."

"Actually… I don't think Klaus would care."

"Really? You don't think he would be weird about it?" There's something odd in the way Caroline poses the question, almost like she's a little _too _interested in the answer, that Elena chooses not to linger on.

Instead, she shrugs and picks up a pack of metallic streamers that need untangling. "He told me himself that he wanted me to have kids one day. If anything, he'd probably be pleased that I'm moving ahead of schedule."

Caroline takes a few moments to respond, choosing instead to meticulously tweak the arrangement of the snowflakes Elena had just assembled. "So, if not for Klaus, who are you worried about? The little old ladies on the Town Council? Because who cares what they think."

"Honestly? I'm mostly worried about this somehow getting back to Damon or Stefan. I'm not sure how they'd take this." She fiddles with the end of a streamer. "And I'm not sure I'm ready to see them, right now," she admits. "I'm actually in a good place for the first time in forever, but I know that'll all go down the drain the second I'm with either of them."

Caroline puts a hand over hers and squeezes. "Don't worry, Elena. Bonnie and I've _got you._"

* * *

It's nice to hear, even if she still remembers how recently they _didn't._

* * *

Bonnie swings by her house after school, her book bag laden with old grimoires.

"Any luck?" Elena asks, placing a steaming mug of tea down in front of Bonnie.

"Does not finding anything _bad_ count as luck?"

"Maybe no news is good news?"

She beckons Elena to sit down on the couch next to her, and reaches out her hand to lay palm-down over Elena's belly, just as she had done the first day. And just like before, Bonnie's eyes slide closed, although, Elena can see them moving rapidly under her lids, as though she were dreaming. Finally, after what feels like forever, Bonnie opens her eyes and pulls away. "It's just so _frustrating_, you know? I can feelthat there's _something_ going on in there, but _what?_"

Elena picks up one of the books Bonnie's spread out on the den coffee table and flips through it. From what she can tell, it's a philosophical treatise on Natural Balance and various methods of interrupting or subverting it. Elena quirks an eyebrow at her.

Bonnie throws up her hands. "I know, not very relevant, but I'm having a tough time with this! I thought maybe since the doppelganger was originally created as a way to ensure the Balance remained intact, that maybe that could be a useful road to go down, but, so far, nothing helpful. I'm not used to hitting dead ends like this."

"Maybe there aren't any answers to find," Elena admits, even though she doesn't want to. Already, she can feel herself becoming resigned to the mystery of it all.

No.

_The miracle. _

Bonnie picks up her mug but, instead of drinking from it, chews on her lip with a thousand mile stare. "I got an email from Grams's replacement at Whitmore out of the blue, the other day," she finally tells Elena after the silence has grown long, expectant.

"Oh. What about?"

"He says he has some of Grams's things, wanted to know if I'd like to swing by and grab them."

Elena sits up a little straighter. "Maybe she has something in her collection that could give us a lead."

"Maybe."

"Why do you sound so hesitant?"

"I dunno. Just a feeling, I guess. The timing feels odd. Why didn't he reach out before this? Why _now_, when exactly what I need most are some more books in my collection?"

"Maybe it's just good luck?"

"Maybe."

"Email him back. Tell him you'll meet."

"Elena—"

Elena grabs hold of Bonnie's hand. Practically pleads with her. "I'll come with you. We can make it a day trip. It'll be fun! And besides, aren't you applying to Whitmore anyway? It'll be good to see the campus."

Bonnie pins her with a knowing look. "Don't get your hopes up too much. For all we know, all Grams left behind were a few Stephen King novels and some old microfiches."

* * *

They go up the next Saturday, even though it's cutting it awfully close to exams.

To be honest, Professor Shane gives her the mega-creeps. Something about his smile and the intense way he takes both she and Bonnie in when they meet him for coffee makes her skin crawl.

He looks at them like he knows all of their secrets.

For all her initial reticence, Bonnie doesn't get the same vibes from him at all. When he smiles at her and asks if she practices like her grandmother did and calls himself a true believer, she smiles back, as though he's charming.

Later, Elena's grateful to finally get into Professor Shane's office, so they can grab the stack of books that Sheila Bennett left behind.

"It's not much," Professor Shane admits. "Just a couple of anthropological studies on supernatural communities here in the Americas, a couple of mythology books, and a first edition _Kujo_. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of her rare text collection."

Bonnie picks up the Stephen King novel and shoots Elena a smile, but her attention is diverted by the books and artifacts artfully displayed throughout the professor's office. "Are all of these yours?" she asks him, a little breathlessly.

That's it.

Elena takes the books from Bonnie and nudges her toward the door before this can turn into a full-blown flirtation.

* * *

Two more weeks pass.

However promising the books they picked up from Grams's office seem, Bonnie inevitably gets sidetracked from her research project by the impending pressure of the study schedule Caroline implements for the three of them. Which is fine. Maybe even good. Bonnie's doing her a huge favor taking this on, and Elena doesn't need answers right this moment, anyway.

For now, it's nice to live and breathe and just be a senior in high school for once. To forget about the strange parts of her life.

She trudges through her exams and even debates putting up a Christmas tree in the living room, where her parents used to place it.

She takes to wearing a little too much of her mother's old perfume, to disguise her changing scent. Takes care not to get too close to Tyler or any of the other hybrids.

Caroline swears its effective.

The only time she runs into any of her hybrid shadows is when she goes over to Tyler's house for a little post-exam celebration. They hang out with the rest of her friends from school like everything is normal—and maybe _it is_. She finds out they're actually kind of nice people, when they're not following her around.

By the end of the night, she almost feels like she's made new friends.

The only close-call she has is about halfway through that party. Everyone is getting ready for a round of shots, but when Elena refuses one, the werewolf girl Tyler had brought back with him from his travels—Hayley—quirks an eyebrow and drawls, "What? You having a baby or something?"

A few of her classmates—Tyler included—pause to stare at her.

Elena's saved from having to respond by Caroline, who tactfully spills her drink down Hayley's shirt.

"Oh! Did I do that?" Caroline asks, as she drags Hayley away. "Let's get you changed!"

* * *

Later, Tyler texts her.

_it's true isn't it? _

She doesn't respond.

* * *

He doesn't mention it the next time he sees her at Caroline's holiday party, but he doesn't offer to spike her hot chocolate the way he normally would, either.

He does whisper into her ear, as they hug goodbye, "Your secret's safe with me."

* * *

This is the darkest time of the year, and yet, Elena feels more filled up with light than she has in months and months and months. She feels like she's come out of the abyss. That she is swimming up, up.

* * *

She calls Jeremy. Talks to him about his Christmas plans.

"You sound really good," he tells her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Happy. I don't remember the last time you sounded so happy."

"Must be some good old-fashioned holiday cheer."

He_ laughs_—actually laughs!— and the sound warms her through and through. "Oh yeah? Send me some of that then, will you?"

* * *

Once the tree is complete, she decides she's not nearly finished. She strings up Christmas lights all over the living room, in front of the mantle, around all of the windows.

At night, she curls up on the floor and basks. Lays her hands on her belly and imagines the life growing within her. Glowing.

* * *

An adamant pounding on the door wakes her.

Elena rolls up from where she had fallen asleep on the sofa, in front of the Christmas tree, and rubs at her eyes.

The pounding continues, more insistent than ever.

Blurry-eyed and groggy, Elena wraps the throw blanket around her shoulders and shuffles to the door. "Hold on," she calls, the words warped by an enormous yawn.

Fumbling with the locks, Elena swings open the door.

Her jaw goes slack when she finds herself face to face with a fuming Klaus.

It's only been a couple of months since he left town, but the sight of him hits her with the same impossible force as she had felt when her parents' car crashed through the bridge's side-rails. The impact that signaled not the end itself, but the beginning of the end. She feels all the oxygen burn out of her body. The room. The universe.

All the while, his gaze rakes over her, his jaw clenching as he takes a deep, evaluative breath. Without preamble, he holds up a bag of blood neatly printed with her name, and orders her, "Invite me in. We need to have a little talk."

* * *

A/N: WHOOPS. HERE LIE PROBLEMS.

Please drop me a comment if you're enjoying! Thanks for reading.


	12. Chapter 12

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

Elena tries to slam the door shut, but Klaus casually intercepts it with an open palm, throwing the door wide open again. There's an inauspicious crack when it rebounds off the wall before slowly creaking forward, the wood quivering in its frame.

They stare hard at each other, Elena breathing raggedly, trying, trying, trying to pull herself together, to not fall apart at the sight of him standing on her doorstep, the nightmare, the dream, the memory made real and whole and very very dangerous again. Every tense line in his body screams threat. Barely bridled fury.

Somehow, she had begun to tell herself that Klaus wasn't real. That he really had gone away, and she would be safe to box him up into an abstraction, part of a vague recollection of a time when she had had to think faster and dare more than everyone else around her, when she had been _more_, somehow, fiercer and brighter than the remote and gravely silent woman she's become.

And _oh, God!_ She had wished for him to return. It had been so easy, when she'd forgotten that being with him was like sprinting headlong into the howling eyewall of a hurricane. How impossible to think that in those quiet, drifting weeks after Alaric had died and Damon and Stefan had left her she had wished that Klaus would come back and give her life meaning again. Give it _interest._ She had wished for him to return with the wistful carelessness of someone who didn't really believe anymore in the possibility of obtaining her heart's secret desires, and so had never really seriously considered the consequences of what would happen if her wish came true.

How perilously foolish she had been.

_(She is always foolish. One of the many things she has in common with her forebears. She can strategize and maneuver her way through any battlefield, but her reckless heart will always find ways to trip her up.)_

And it _had _been reckless to let herself be so complacently happy. To put him so firmly behind her. As though she ever really could. How could she forget that it's always when he finally slips her mind that he always finds a way to creep back in and ruin everything?

"Invite me in, Elena," Klaus repeats, tearing her from her rapidly spiraling thoughts with the lure of his soft, persuasive words.

As though he is not asking her to do the most deadly thing of all.

_(As though she hadn't already invited him in once before to somewhere she should never ever have let him tread.) _

There is a terrible, small part of herself that wants to.

"I thought you were supposed to be anywhere but here," she says, still too stunned by his presence to come up with a more substantial remark.

Klaus is all false cheer as he replies. "Oh, I was, and I had a lovely, interesting time away from this flyspeck village. I spent six weeks in Greece, then another two in southern Italy, where my courier delivered this blood packet to me." He tosses it to her, and she catches it on reflex, the blanket around her shoulders spilling onto the floor.

She shivers from more than just the sudden chill as she juggles the bag around in her hands. Now that she's holding it, she can see that it's already about half empty. "What does this have to do with anything?" she asks him carefully as she puts the bag down on the entrance table, dread curling in her stomach. Hoping against hope that this sample was taken before the mystical conception took place. As certain as she had been that Klaus would be fine with this pregnancy were he to ever even find out about it, she now senses how misguided her assumption had been.

"Don't play naïve. I could smell it in your blood the moment I unsealed the bag. Subtle, nascent, yet unmistakable all the same. You're with child."

Elena closes her eyes. "Yes." There's no point in denying it now that she knows for certain that he's onto her. He can probably smell it on her body even as they speak. Can probably hear her baby's heartbeat.

Klaus presses in as close to the threshold barrier as the magic repelling him will allow. "Who's the father?"

Startled by the soft menace infusing the question, Elena opens her eyes to gape up at Klaus. "Excuse me?"

"Who. Is. The. Father?"

"Why do you care?"

Something calculating enters Klaus's expression. "Perhaps because it might have something to do with why each and every one of the wolves I attempted to turn in Tuscany bled out and died rather than completing the transition. I lost an entire bloodline when I tried to use that most recent batch." His eyes sweep over her from head to toe. "In light of your predilection for inviting the supernatural into your bed, whoever sired your offspring is undoubtedly at fault."

Elena wraps a protective arm around her middle. "So my blood isn't effective while I'm pregnant. That's not even that surprising, when you think about it. My blood and the baby's blood are bound up in a circuit, right? That's probably what the problem is. Why are you assuming this pregnancy is supernatural at all?"

"Is he a witch? A werewolf? Something else?"

Elena frowns at him, offput by his insistence on discovering her child's paternity. "None of the above."

Klaus glares at her the way Rebekah often would when she fantasized about tearing her throat out. "What do the ever-so-dashing Salvatore brothers think of this?" he asks. "I'm surprised they haven't already relieved the culprit of his vital parts."

She shrugs uneasily. "No idea. They left the same day as you."

This surprises him. "Oh? My hybrids never mentioned." He pauses, considering. "Nor did they ever report your condition to me."

Hell_. _"Did you specifically order them to?" she asks, hastily drawing up a smokescreen for Tyler's rebellion before Klaus can dwell too much on this informational gap. "They seem kind of literal to me. Anyway, I've been disguising my symptoms."

He cocks his head to the side. Takes his time looking her over. "Indeed."

She tries very hard not to react to his scrutiny, no matter how much she wants to. She wishes she hadn't dropped the blanket, that it wouldn't be so obvious that she wanted to use it as a shield if she bent to pick it up now. No. She doesn't dare move a muscle. To do so would be to admit her many weaknesses.

The moment stretches on in potent silence. They both watch each other with the intensity of a predator and its prey regarding each other across a short distance, one waiting for the right moment to pounce, the other for the right moment to bolt. The charge between them becomes unbearable.

There's something about him today that's throwing her. Something in his expression and his general aura of hostility that she can't quite put her finger on. It's right _there_, in the heavy silence hanging between them, if only she could grasp it.

"I thought you wanted me to have children," Elena finally ventures, when she can't take the silence between them any longer without crumbling under Klaus's oppressive regard.

"I do."

"Well, I'm having one, and you don't seem particularly happy about it."

"You speak as though you know me so well."

She does, though. It wouldn't be possible, to go through what he had put her through, to surrender herself to the death he had offered her so completely that she still yearned to return to it, without coming to know him more intimately than she had ever known anyone else in her life. Doubly impossible to make his death her mission without bringing him close to her heart. Even when he had been gone for months, even after she had tucked him away into a part of her past she never let herself dwell upon, it had only taken a few minutes resubmerged in his presence for everything to come rushing back to her. For she had discovered the loneliness that lay at the bottom of his wretched, violent heart like a wild black ocean, deep and endless… and a perfect reflection of the loneliness within her own heart. A mirror where she had never expected to find one.

She knows him well enough to understand that she can never tell him any of this. He would never forgive her for seeing him so clearly.

Instead, she does something she very rarely does. She cuts to the heart of the matter. "Why are you really here, Klaus?"

"Obviously to discuss your condition."

"You could have done that over the phone, or had one of your hybrids deliver the message. And unless you're going to tell me to end this pregnancy—which I'm not going to do, by the way—then there's nothing to be done, other than wait for me to have the baby." She takes a step closer to the threshold, so she is _right there_. Squints up at him. "Why are you _really_ here?"

He looks away first. Off to the side, as though there could possibly be anything of interest on her parents' covered porch "I never thought I'd see the day when someone could tempt you free of the Salvatores." He says it like he's changing the topic. Like he's hoping to distract her. Somehow, Elena gets the feeling that he's actually doing neither of those things.

Insight grips her.

"You're jealous."

Klaus's attention whips back to her in an instant. "Don't be absurd."

"You're unhappy that I'm having this child you yourself told me you wanted me to have one day because you're _jealous_. You want to know who the father is so you can—let me guess—kill him? Make a big production of it by saying it's about the hybrids who wouldn't turn, just to hide your real feelings?"

"If you'd simply indulge my curiosity, then I could be on my merry way and you need never concern yourself over my motives ever again."

"I thought we were through indulging each other."

He clenches his jaw. "Are you going to tell me, or must I resort to other means of persuasion?"

"I don't even understand why you care," Elena huffs. "You've been crystal clear that you don't want anything more to do with me. Not personally, anyway. So what gives?"

His expression freezes over. "You're right. I don't care. Forget I asked." He turns on his heel and stalks away.

Elena watches him storm off, lingering at the door for long minutes after he had gone.

No matter what he'd said at the end, she knows she'd had the right of it. Klaus _had _been jealous. She just doesn't understand _why_, after the way he'd treated her last fall.

No. She can't afford to wander down that path. If she gets to understand Klaus's twisted mind any more than she already does, she may never be able to kill him when the time inevitably comes round again.

She shuts the front door on their conversation and any Klaus-related thoughts altogether. Trudges back to the living room, where the Christmas lights are still twinkling merrily, oblivious to the winter storm that just blew in, and picks up her cell phone.

Bonnie answers on the fourth ring.

"Get the gang together," Elena tells her without preamble. "We've got a problem."

* * *

A/N: Sooo many problems on the horizon. A jealous Klaus is a violent Klaus, lol. Thanks for reading, and for your lovely comments!


	13. Chapter 13

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

Except the gang doesn't seem to think so.

"Did he threaten you?" Bonnie asks from her perch at the kitchen island. "Or the baby?"

"Well, no," Elena admits, frowning. "But he was upset."

"About what?"

Elena turns away and busies herself throwing dishes into the sink. "You know, the usual," she answers vaguely, turning back to her friends. No way she can possibly answer _that _with any honesty. That would require letting on about that night, which is a no-go zone.

Caroline, who has been jittery and nervous ever since Elena dropped the news that Klaus was back, bites her lip and asks, "Is this definitely something we need to do something about? Or is this one of those situations where it's best to just let sleeping bears lie?"

Bonnie nods along, like Caroline's being completely reasonable here.

Elena gapes at the two of them. She can't believe this. She calls a group meeting to discuss _Klaus_, Enemy Number One, and Tyler and Matt don't even show up, while neither Caroline nor Bonnie seem to see the urgency.

"No way. If Klaus is back, we have to get rid of him."

"Elena," Bonnie says her name like she's about to break some bad news. "Unless you have any idea on how to _get rid _of Klaus, I've got nothing." Her phone rings, then, and after glancing at it, she tells them, "I have to take this. I'll catch you both later," and heads out the door.

Caroline taps her nails against the counter. "Don't look so worried, Elena. If Klaus tries anything, we'll think of something, like we always do. But in the mean time I think we have more important things to worry about—like the Winter Wonderland fest, which is only _one week _away. I sure could use an extra pair of hands?"

Elena agrees—she always agrees—and Caroline lets herself out.

She gives Tyler a call, thinking to give him and his cohort at least some forewarning, but his phone rings through to voicemail. She leaves a message but doesn't hear anything back until later that afternoon, when he texts her a simple _thx._

* * *

She watches the sun set through her kitchen window, her hands curled around a steaming mug of vervain tea, and considers whether she's overreacting. She replays her conversation with Klaus over and over again in her mind, dissecting it for any hint of a threat to anyone she loved. The conversation had been charged, and she'd been unnerved at the time, but could that have just been the surprise of seeing him? Could she have misread the whole thing? It was true, he'd never said a word against the pregnancy itself. Had seemed primarily preoccupied with discovering the identity of the father, which, joke's on him, there isn't one, so no need to worry over much about him finding and eviscerating an ex-boyfriend.

Except, she can't shake the feeling that she's right about this. That she has every right to be freaked out and suspicious and that it's her friends who are wrong to dismiss the danger so quickly.

* * *

Two, three days go by, and she doesn't see any more of Klaus. If he hadn't come by her house, she wouldn't even know he was back.

That all strikes her as patently odd.

She notices one more thing: her hybrid bodyguards have all stopped trailing her.

It's just not possible that Klaus has stopped monitoring her altogether.

* * *

It's so quiet that she begins to wonder if it had all been one of those pregnancy dreams. The idea that she had called up her friends and worried so much over a nightmare fills her with so much embarrassment and anxiety that she actually drives by his house, just to double-check that she hadn't actually imagined the whole episode.

There's a black SUV in the driveway that she unfortunately remembers from that night and a steady stream of hybrids crisscross the property, looking as agitated as a nest of kicked ants. The sight reassures her that Klaus is definitely back while also completely unsettling her in the process.

She drives away as fast as she can, hoping no one saw her.

* * *

"It's the weirdest thing," she confides to Caroline over coffee at the Grill while the other girl reviews her to-do list. "I haven't seen him at all since he showed up on my doorstep. I think he's up to something."

Caroline peers up at her over the top of her planner. "Klaus? Oh, no, I saw him yesterday. He's donating a painting to the festival."

"What?"

"Yeah, I saw him here last night and he agreed to make a painting for the auction. I told you he's just decided to move back into that mansion he built. You know how he is." She makes a birdlike gesture. "Flighty."

"Did he say anything to you? Ask you any leading questions?"

"Other than the usual terrible pick-up lines? No." She goes back to writing notes in her tiny, careful script. "Don't borrow trouble, Elena, or trouble will borrow _you_."

* * *

Klaus. Making a painting. Ha!

* * *

Before she leaves, she asks Matt for a favor.

* * *

Days more slip by.

Nothing.

* * *

Maybe she _had_ misread him. No. Not possible. But maybe—

* * *

The one time she sees him, he's stepping out of City Hall, locked in conversation with the mayor.

She stops, and watches him as they cross the street together, as they pass within twenty feet of her. He never even looks her way.

* * *

It makes her suspicious.

* * *

That night, on a hunch, she goes to the window, and very, very slowly, draws back her curtains, just a fraction of an inch, so that she can look outside onto the moonlit street.

* * *

She wakes up the next morning to a text from Tyler.

_Seen Bonnie? Need 2 talk 2 her. _

Elena lies awake staring at her phone. Realizes she hasn't seen Bonnie since that morning she'd called her and Caroline over to tell her about Klaus.

When she calls, it rings through to voicemail.

* * *

She's very careful not to say anything that could incriminate her or any of their friends.

* * *

The day goes by without Bonnie texting her back.

Elena grows more uneasy as the day goes on. It's not at all like Bonnie not to call her back, or at least text. The last time she'd avoided her like this, they ended up barely talking for months.

* * *

Dutifully, Elena goes over to the town green that afternoon to help Caroline string up decorations. The festival is the next day. Caroline, predictably, is flipping out as she orders hordes of volunteers around.

"Have you heard from Bonnie lately?" she asks her as they unpack boxes and boxes of lanterns.

"Oh, she's gone to Whitmore to meet with that Professor again." Caroline turns to a volunteer. "Why are you setting up those tables so close to the booths? People need to be able to walk!"

"Again?" Elena echoes.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, he's been helping her with her research about the—" Caroline gestures discreetly over her midsection. "You know." When Elena doesn't say anything, Caroline rushes on. "But don't worry! She hasn't told him anything specific that could connect her research back to you. Professor Shane doesn't really know anything."

The fact that Bonnie's been seeing Professor Shane and keeping it from her—but not from Caroline—stings more than a little. She'd thought the three of them were past keeping secrets from each other.

"I wish she'd mentioned this to me," Elena says, to cover her hurt. "That guy gives me the creeps."

Caroline shrugs, undisturbed. "Bonnie doesn't seem to get them from him. And besides, she's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

Elena glances behind her, for just a second, before pointedly turning her eyes back to the decorating at hand. "Yeah, I suppose we all are."

* * *

Matt finally comes through with that favor later that afternoon.

_Just walked in_, he texts her, alerting her that Klaus had just arrived at the Grill.

Elena makes her excuses to Caroline and wastes no time in racing over to his mansion.

If there are any clues or any information to be had that will help her get a handle on the situation with him, then they'll be there, in his home.

* * *

The front door isn't even locked. It's so easy to sneak inside that part of Elena wants to turn back, in case this is a trap.

But no. Klaus is at the Grill. His hybrids aren't really even his anymore. Everything is fine.

Without knowing _what_, exactly, she's looking for, rifling through his house is challenging work. She finds a ream of hand-written letters from across multiple centuries that all seem completely disconnected yet are kept bundled meaningfully together, a stack of grimoires, none of which are written in English, a few weapons stuck randomly into drawers here and there, and a number of necklaces and odd pieces metal or bone or stone that make her skin crawl when she runs her fingers over them. None of it tells her anything _useful. _

She finds the painting Caroline had mentioned on her way out, and frowns at the snowflake motif. So he really had made a painting, just because Caroline had asked.

Unable to help herself, she another step closer, to examine the palette table strewn with heaps of runny paint, the chemical odor going straight to her head, the brushes soaking in some soaking in some sort of solvent, the rags and dishes and powdered pigments in unmarked jars. Her heart pangs a little bit as she studies Klaus's work table, the place where he works his alchemy.

Yearningly, she reaches out, and touches her fingertips to the surface of the painting. They come away wet. Her fingers smudge the brushwork as she pulls away, and as she stares at the muddied section of the painting, the urge to ruin the rest of it rises up inside of her, sharp and unappeasable.

She smears her entire palm across the surface of the painting in one harsh slash, taking savage satisfaction in wrecking Klaus's work. She imagines herself wiping her hands over his life, his soul, warping everything he knew about himself in the process, the way he had warped her that night he'd let her look through his paintings and begged her to tell him her deepest darkest secret. She should never have let it happen. She knows that now.

It had happened, though, and no matter how much she tries to bury it all under denial so thick she could choke on it, she can't take it back. Not any of it.

* * *

That night, she opens up her curtains and spots him watching her window from beneath the shadow of the spreading oak, she wraps a shawl around her shoulders and slips outside, onto the porch. Sits down on the porch swing, drawing her knees up under her, and watches him watching her.

* * *

A/N: thanks for reading!


	14. Chapter 14

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

"Why are you following me, Klaus?" she calls into the cold night air.

Slowly, he draws nearer to her. "You're hiding something from me. I want to know what."

"The identity of my child's father?"

He doesn't respond, just continues his steady stare.

"I thought you didn't care," she reminds him.

"Tell me why you broke into my home and ruined my painting."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He leans against the porch column. "You're usually a better liar than this."

"Oh?"

"But your scent was all over my house. As it was, coincidentally, when I returned last week. Have you whiled away many hours there in my absence?"

"Only to confirm that you were really truly gone. I guess some things are too good to be true."

His mouth tips up into an amused little half-smile. "Come now. You've probably been more entertained the past week playing cat-and-mouse with me than you have been since my departure."

"Actually, I've been kind of preoccupied since you left. Doctor's appointments, setting up the nursery, pre-natal yoga. I'd forgotten about you completely."

He maneuvers into her space in an instant, crowding her back against the porch swing as he leans over her and examines her face closely, his gaze razor sharp upon her. "I shall endeavor to remind you then." He opens his mouth as though to say something more, but the wind shifts, cold and flavored with woodsmoke, and Elena shivers, and it's that, just that simple little moment, that catches him up.

She can see the moment his thoughts shift, the way that moonlight changes the shape of things in the dark. One moment, he's furious, and the next, he's ducking forward to capture her mouth against his own, the heat of his lips moving against hers searing through her brain like a lightning strike. Whatever she might have said next disappears as her thoughts white out and all she can focus on is the overwhelming immediacy of Klaus grappling her body up against his own.

Kissing Klaus again is like tumbling back into a dream. Falling endlessly into a memory that she's more than half-convinced herself cannot really be true, a recollection that had to have been mostly fantasy, something invented by her intimacy-starved heart, because there was no way any two people could achieve the kind of profound intimacy they had achieved that night.

And yet—and yet—she can taste the same hunger in him that she feels in herself. The same loneliness on his lips that had first drawn her in. The power of that remembered flavor draws her in with a crushing, seductive urgency. With the intimation that if she only stays here with him long enough, he'll devour her again, offer her that death she still dreams about—

No.

No. She doesn't want that anymore. Doesn't want him.

She has other, brighter things, now.

She tears herself away from him and scrambles over to the other side of the porch. Watches as Klaus remains frozen, clenching his empty hands, before turning to face her, his face carefully blank but his eyes blazing.

"_What the fuck, Klaus." _

"I wasn't aware that Southern ladies used such language."

"What the fuck! What is this? You give me the cold shoulder _for months _after we sleep together, and then you come back here and act like a jealous boyfriend because why? Because I'm pregnant and you can't stand the idea that someone else played with your toy? Well fuck you! I'm not yours, not now, not ever—"

He wraps his palm around her throat and pushes her back against the wall between one second and the next. Her head cracks against the wood siding, the pain lancing through the back of her skull feeding into the fury bubbling through her blood. She claws at Klaus's hand like an animal, kicking out as hard as she can and taking vicious satisfaction when her nails draw blood and her feet strike flesh.

"You have always belonged to me, sweetheart," Klaus hisses in her ear, ignoring her struggling and bucking against him as completely as though she were a gnat. "You belonged to me before you were born, and every day since."

"No. I fulfilled my part of that bargain last spring," she spits. "Whatever connection _might _have existed between us ended when you killed me—"

He releases her. "Then how is it I cannot get you out of my head?"

Elena rubs at her throat. "What?"

"You. I've thought of near nothing else since that night—"

"_That night_." She laughs at him, bitterly. "You think I'm going to believe that you cared at all about any of that? As far as I can tell, you were just playing with me."

"You know that I wasn't."

God, he has to be _delusional _if he thinks she's going to fall for any of this! Whatever game he's playing, he's apparently deemed it necessary to gaslight her, and she would applaud the effort if she wasn't so direly insulted that he would try to play with her emotions like this.

"You told Tyler to bite Caroline _the next morning_," she points out. "And you were horrible to me the next night! Why would you do any of that if you cared?"

"Because you made me weak, and I couldn't stand it."

She narrows her eyes at him. "I don't believe you. You're just trying to manipulate me into something, but guess what? It won't work."

Klaus reaches for her again, but she flinches away from him.

Dropping his hand back to his side, he tries to persuade her. "I could already see how this would play out—you in love with each of the Salvatore brothers, and the two of them using you to get at me, _just as Stefan did the very next night_. I couldn't allow that. Better far to keep you at a distance. For myself, and for you."

Elena stares at him. He'd hurt her badly last fall. Had come into her life in a time when she'd been isolated from absolutely everyone, when she'd needed someone, anyone, to connect with, only for him to rip apart whatever fragile happiness he'd given her the very next day. It had been cruelly done. Had affected her worse than she could ever bear to let on. Thinking on any of it now, on Klaus, on the things he's just said to her, makes her head spin. How dare he press her on this. How dare he sound so _convincing_? Her breaths come in short, ragged pants, as though she'd just run a long, hard race over harsh terrain. She can't do this. She can't have this conversation. She can't let herself believe him even for an instant, because no matter what, he's _lying_ and she just has to remember it—

She stares into his face, and she knows. He's telling her the truth, as selfish and screwed up as it is. In his twisted way, he had pushed her away and preferred for her to search out his death rather than remain close to him, because he had felt it to be the better option for them both. Because he was too afraid of the intimacy she had offered him. She looks at him and she knows he's telling the truth, because she knows _him_, even though she wishes she didn't. Even though she has regretted letting herself come to know him with every fiber of her being.

Reeling, she circles around him, so she doesn't have to see his face as she asks him lowly, "Even if I do believe you, am I supposed to just forgive you now?"

Klaus turns with her, tracking her every movement. As though he can sense her weakening toward him. "Have I not forgiven you for worse?"

"Like what?"

"The murder of my brother. Your numerous attempts to destroy me."

"I'll give you a list of the things you've done as bad or worse to me. Between the two of us, it's still you who's in the red."

"I'm sure you'll find a way to amend that."

Elena comes to a pause and leans back against the cool solid wood of the front door. "Don't force my hand, and I won't." She presses her cheek into her shoulder. "I don't want this kind of life anymore," she admits. "I just—I want to be quiet, and to know that everyone I love is safe, and to go to bed at night and only worry about normal things—"

"You're not a normal girl."

"But I _want _to be."

"You just told me not three months ago that a normal life held no interest for you."

"Things change."

"Because of the child."

"Yes."

He reads it for what it is. A rejection, plain and simple.

A storm passes over Klaus's face. "Who is the father of your child, Elena?"

"This again?"

He stalks forward and plants his hands on either side of the door, pinning her in the cage of his arms. "Who was it who pleased you enough to finally tempt you free from the Salvatores?" Naked jealousy, worse, somehow, in its clarity than it had been last week, now that she understands him better, drips from his voice. "Who do you prize so highly that you persist in shielding him from me?"

She could tell him now. End his jealousy. But that would be a kindness, and she can't find it within her heart to give him even the smallest portion of her kindness. She has so little of it left. The last time she had offered it to him, he had slapped her hand away. She couldn't bear if he were to do that to her again.

She's more afraid of what would happen if he didn't.

Elena fingers fumble for the door latch. The door swings open behind her, and she practically throws herself back over the threshold—but not fast enough. Klaus catches her by the front of her shirt and drags her back over the threshold before she can make a clean escape.

"Did you think that was subtle?" he asks.

"Not really," she tells him, her heart racing madly. She yanks a bottle of distilled vervain water from her pocket and upends it on his hands.

He startles enough when his flesh boils that he drops his hold on her, just long enough for her to stumble back across the threshold.

He gives her a withering look as she straightens up within the protection of her home. "Are you going to hide inside your home forever instead of facing me?"

"I came outside to meet you tonight, didn't I?"

Klaus tilts his head. "Listen to your heart go. You're afraid. Though, you weren't, until just a few moments ago. Why is that? Are you afraid for your lover… or afraid that you may want what I'm offering you?"

Hurriedly, she slams the door in his face.

"Elena, we're not finished here," he yells through the door. "Come out and talk to me now, or better yet invite me in, and we need not involve another soul."

She puts her hands over her ears and races up the stairs. Dives under her covers and pretends she can't practically feel Klaus malingering outside, under that tree, his eyes burning in fury as he stares up at her bedroom window.

It's an empty threat, she assures herself. There's no lover to speak of, so there's nothing to worry about.

* * *

A/N: Thanks for reading, please review if you're enjoying this fic and are interested to see where it goes! Also, you can find me on tumblr over at livlepretre - I post a lot about my fics and a lot of tvd content in between updates.


	15. Chapter 15

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

Like every other morning, Elena rises and begins her day with a mug of vervain tea, and at least a token effort at a nutritionally square breakfast. The nausea hits her before eight, and she's recovered enough by eight-thirty to brush her teeth and her hair and prepare for a day of following Caroline's doubtlessly increasingly harried orders.

She peers cautiously out the living room window before stepping outside, concerned that Klaus might be waiting for her, even though hours and hours have passed since she'd fled from their conversation.

* * *

No Klaus in sight.

* * *

She vacillates between scolding herself for paranoia and scolding herself for not being paranoid _enough _as she slips out the door and hurries to her car. She's filled her coat pockets with more of those flimsy little bottles filled with distilled vervain water, and has one of Alaric's spring-action stakes hidden beneath each of her sleeves. She's as ready as she can be without bringing an actual crossbow, or putting together a fresh batch of vervain grenades, which she's been reluctant to risk since finding out about the baby, but she still can't help but feel both completely unprepared for whatever Klaus might have in store for her after she ran off from him last night and also completely ridiculous for acting like she's charging into battle when really he probably just wants to corner her into another conversation she's not quite ready to have.

Will likely never be ready to have.

Nope. If he tries to corner her again, the best thing would be to throw all of her bottles of vervain at him and run. And if he tries to _kiss _her again she should just stake him and skip town before he wakes up.

* * *

Elena arrives at the town green to find a complex feat of organizational prowess already underway, as Caroline directs caterers to their booths, the band and myriad technicians to the stage, and a swarm of volunteers to unpacking the charity items and arranging them on tables. Caroline herself flits between the tables, conferring with her clipboard before writing out lot numbers and starting prices for each item.

The sight of all of those people instantly relaxes Elena. Far better to keep herself busy in a public space where Klaus wouldn't dare try anything than to stay at home where she would be easily accessible.

"Elena!" Caroline calls, catching sight of her. "_Thank God_ you're here. I need you to oversee the bar set-up. Matt is a darling, but he's way too pressed unloading the deliveries to get the specialty menus set up." She points her off in the direction of the bar booths, and Elena dutifully trudges off to see what she can do.

* * *

Matt strolls over to her with a case of liquor fifteen minutes later. Unloading the bottles onto the bar, he turns and asks her in a low voice, "Elena, are you really pregnant?"

Elena straightens up from where she'd been writing out the specialty drink menu in her mostly-adequate calligraphy and stares at him. "Who told you?"

Matt slumps against the bar and rubs at his eyebrow. "So it's true."

"Yeah. Who spilled? Caroline?"

"Klaus did." Matt shoots her a glare. "I would say I was mad you never told me, but I think only the fact that I had no idea what he was talking about saved me. I hope you warned whoever the father is."

Elena shoves down hard on whatever guilt Matt's admonishment inspires. "That's not an issue."

"_Not an issue?_ Elena, whoever he is, Klaus is gunning for him."

When she doesn't respond, he hunches close, suggests in a low, concerned voice, "If you don't feel like you can risk contacting this guy, then let me. I'll get in touch with him, let him know to watch out."

Elena squints at Matt. "You don't have to worry about this." She lays her hand over his, and despite how his anxiety over her situation tenses his shoulders, his pulse is steady under her fingers. Just like Matt himself.

"I just can't stand the idea of someone I know being in that kind of trouble," he says.

When was the last time it had occurred to Elena to worry over someone who wasn't on that list she had given to Elijah last spring?

"It's no one you know. Really, you don't have to worry."

He shakes his head. "You don't know what it's like having to face this kind of stuff when you've been kept in the dark. When you're just an ordinary person."

"That's not what's going on—" She clamps her mouth shut. It would be so easy to confide in Matt. To tell her old friend everything, especially when he looks at her like this, with so much concern for someone whose identity he doesn't even know. He cares the way _she _should care. The way she used to care. It would be so easy, to tell him, to let him in, but all her confession would do is get them both into future trouble. The less he knows, the safer he really is. The safer she is, and her baby. "Look, I swear I have everything in hand," Elena concludes, capping her calligraphy pen and backing away. "I have to help Caroline now. See you later?"

She takes off before she can let anything more slip.

* * *

Caroline has about a thousand more jobs for her, and for once, Elena is glad to do them all.

They mostly keep her mind off of last night, and if she occasionally cannot help but flash back to the devouring heat of Klaus's mouth against her own, or the sound of his voice, calling after her as she fled up the stairs… If she cannot help but look over her shoulder, each time expecting to find him watching her, the way he had for the entire past week… Well. She's learning not to feel guilty for things she just can't help.

Some things really are just inevitable.

* * *

Klaus is never there when she looks over her shoulder.

* * *

She _does_ feel guilty for the spike of disappointment that lances through her each time she looks and doesn't see him.

* * *

Matt finds her again at the sandwich table set up for the volunteers.

Before she can ask after how his morning has gone, he immediately launches into her again.

"Look, I get that you don't want to talk about this, and I mean, I _get that_, 'Lena—"

"_Do you?" _

"But c'mon! You're setting someone up to get hurt. You must know that."

She's a little taken aback. She hadn't expected him to dwell on this, the way he apparently had, even after their conversation this morning. She tries to reassure him.

"Matt, I can handle this—"

"But you don't have to handle this alone," he tells her quickly. "You're always doing this—going your own way. Let me help you."

Elena steps back, offended despite the fact that Matt's offer assuredly comes from the right place. "_I'm _going my own way? That's rich." She looks around, makes sure no one else is listening. "I thought you wanted out from all the supernatural drama? Isn't that why you've been so fair-weather with me lately?"

"This is different."

"Oh? How? Because I called you last week when Klaus came back and you didn't answer—"

"I can't let someone innocent get hurt because you'd rather play games with an Original vampire, Elena."

Only Matt still has the power to stop her up short with his plainly-spoken condemnation. Everyone else who'd had that power is in the ground.

She averts her face. Her throat feels thick as she asks, "Because I'm certainly not an innocent in all of this, right? I'm just as guilty as they are."

He doesn't deny it.

Somehow, deep down, she had never expected him to agree with her very worst assessment of herself.

"You know what? I don't _want _your help, Matt," she tells him. "And I definitely don't need it."

"Elena, wait, I didn't mean—"

"But you did. You always say what you mean." Unlike her. "That's just who you are."

He looks at her a long time, like she's the one breaking _his _heart. "I don't feel like I even know who you are anymore," he finally tells her.

"You'd have to have been there to get it."

She hears Caroline frantically yelling her name then, thankfully, and turns away from Matt to see what she needs.

If it feels like turning away from a lifelong friendship, she doesn't let that stop her.

* * *

At two, townies begin filtering into the festival, and it becomes harder and harder to keep a sharp eye out on her surroundings as the green begins to fill with boisterous winter cheer.

Finally, reluctantly, she stops searching.

* * *

A/N: This chapter got loooonngggg so I had to cut it in half. Please let me know your thoughts—I am hoping to post the next part (with Klaus!) later today but a little extra encouragement never hurt!


	16. Chapter 16

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

As she meanders through the merry grounds, dotted with fragrant fir trees and already softly illuminated by twinkling white lights, Elena cannot help but reflect back on years gone by. How she'd come here with Bonnie and Caroline, when the three of them truly had been inseparable. How they'd giggled over boys and drank hot chocolate and shopped for last-minute Christmas presents, never knowing that their time together just being kids would be over years early. And before that, to her childhood, when she'd raced through this festival like a wild hare, her brother toddling after her, her parents laughing and warning her not to wander off too far.

* * *

She had, though. She had wandered very, very far.

* * *

About an hour in, she spots Tyler speaking to his mother, before breaking away to whisper something to Caroline that immediately sets her off. Elena watches as she storms off in the direction of the stage, her clipboard clutched furiously to her chest.

It's probably nothing. Probably just relationship drama, which Elena has no business prying into. And she wouldn't, she totally wouldn't, except for that tingle of intuition up the back of her neck that whispers that this is _something else_.

Elena hurries to intercept Caroline.

And promptly knocks straight into Klaus, who catches her about the shoulders before she can trip on her ass.

"Steady on," he murmurs, a smile creeping over his mouth as he looks her over in her wool party dress and knee-high boots. "Don't you look good enough to eat."

Elena claws her way out of his grasp and quickly puts a few feet of space between them. Anything to break contact from his warm grip. Anything to block out the intensity of her body's reaction to him. The jolt of desire she'd felt at his words. Her hands dig into her coat pockets, where the vervain presses cool and reassuring against her fingertips. Grounding her.

"What are you doing here?" she snaps.

He gestures in the direction of the charity auction table, totally unperturbed by her tone. "Dropping off my painting. It's a tad bit late—there were some unexpected delays—but better late than never, I suppose."

Elena glares at him. "No, I mean: What are you doing here, _with me? _I thought I was clear last night that I don't have anything else to say to you."

"Indeed. It's what you're refusing to say that so interests me."

"You're sounding like a broken record."

He grows serious on her. Crosses the distance between them like it's nothing and studies her seriously. Caught in his regard, Elena looks up into his face and studies him in turn.

He's so close, like this. Close enough that she can smell his cologne, that she can feel the unnatural heat blazing from his body. Feel all of that immense power, crackling under his skin, straining to be unleashed. He's the most lethal thing of all, but more dangerous still is the threat that if this moment goes on even just a few seconds longer, Elena will break. Will lift her hand to his cheek, or bury her face against his throat, or press her mouth to his, and then it will be game over. Klaus will know exactly how much power he has over her still. How much her indifference to him has been nothing more than smoke and mirrors ever since that awful night.

"You're afraid of me," Klaus observes.

"I am not." The words spill too fast from her lips.

He tilts his head knowingly, before pointedly drawing her hand from her pocket.

Elena stands there frozen, unable to stop him, as he delicately turns her palm up and gently peels back her fingers to reveal the little bottles of vervain she had been clutching.

All in all, it's more than an admission.

Her heart flies as she watches him, waiting for him to lash out at her, to snatch away this tiny little defense. Nearly the only thing she has against him.

He never does. Instead, his fingers stroke over her hand, almost like he's trying to soothe a skittish animal. He pauses when his fingers trace over her wrist—where he must feel the straps of her brace—but he doesn't comment on it. Instead, he runs his thumb over the back of her hand one more time, and closes her fingers back up over the vervain with a tenderness that makes her head swim.

The weapons she's brought with her are enough to seriously injure or even kill a normal vampire, but he's not a normal vampire. Against him, they're nothing more than a security blanket.

He doesn't call her out on it. Doesn't call her foolish or laugh at her.

For the first time, Elena worries that he might see through her as well as she sees through him.

"You never used to be afraid of me," he muses as she tucks her hands back into her pockets.

"I was. Of course I was," she says, recalling those bone-wearying days before the sacrifice, when her march toward death at his hands had been an implacable, inescapable fact. The unbounded terror she had felt on first seeing him again, months later, in her school hallway. The damning admission that she still yearned for his bite mere weeks after that. She had been afraid every step of the way.

He waves her off. "Not really."

"I think you're misremembering things."

"Am I?" The way he asks the question tells her exactly how much he doubts the possibility.

Elena looks past him, into the distance.

She'd wandered so far off the path of the life her parents would have wanted for her. Had wandered so far from the path of the living, into the land of the dead, that she had believed herself to be truly and forever lost. And yet, now, miraculously, she has this life growing within her. This future with a child and a chance to reclaim the life snatched away from her by her parents' deaths. By her own death at Klaus's hands _(no—by his mouth)_ last spring.

She dares to imagine herself five, six years from now, here with her child, watching as her daughter or her son races through the crowd— happy, safe.

"Do you remember when I told you that I still dream about your bite?" she asks him slowly. She doesn't miss the way his eyes darken as her question lingers between them.

"Yes."

The way he utters that one syllable makes something hot and vital clench inside of her.

This is the problem. Everything tracks back to that one moment, when she, the liar, had told him something true and secret about herself that she should have died rather than ever reveal, especially to _him_.

She reveals another truth to him now.

"I think… I think it was because I had gotten all twisted up inside. When I first found out about the curse, about my role in breaking it—my death—I was relieved. I'd had this feeling hanging over me, ever since I didn't die in that car crash with my parents, that something had gone wrong. That I had gone wrong. There was this huge part of me that really honestly _yearned _to die—that wanted what you were so insistently offering me. Even last fall, I still wanted it." She takes a deep breath. "But I don't, anymore. I think—I think I was just… grieving."

"Grieving."

"Yes."

The air _vibrates _between them as Klaus absorbs her words.

"How convenient for you."

"That's the _point_, Klaus. You _were _convenient. I was lonely and sad and I didn't realize it, but I was still mourning for so many people, for _so much_. And you were… just there."

Everything she says is absolutely true, except for the part that she omits.

_(He never needs to know about everything that came after.) _

"It's not so easy. You can't just pretend none of it ever happened," he warns her.

But she can. She can. She can do anything at all, if she must.

_(Even cut him out. _

_Him, her heart's reflection.) _

That future she wants for her child is only possible if he's not in it.

Elena gathers all of her anger, her jealousy, and her monstrous loneliness into a cruel little ball of neat indifference and throws it in Klaus's face. "None of _what_, Klaus? A one night stand? Because, yeah, basically, I have. You don't _mean _anything to me." She swallows. Forces out this one final lie. "You never did."

Her arrows hit their mark. She can see the way her carefully worded degradation razes him, burns him out. She knows him well enough, understands him deeply enough, to grasp how much he fears his own loneliness. His own irrelevance in the lives of others. It feels like cutting herself open as well, to do this to him, even as she feels the keen relief of having it done.

"And the father of your child?" he asks her at last.

"What about him?"

"Was he also so convenient?"

She doesn't answer him.

He clenches his jaw. Gathers himself. "Fine then. Allow me to show you how _inconvenient_ I can be." He turns on his heel and slips into the crowd.

She watches him go for a long time.

* * *

A/N: OH MY GOSH. I asked for encouragement and y'all gave it to me in DROVES. THANK YOU.

Ummm… so here's the thing… you all were SO encourage that I may already have a THIRD update pretty much ready… Let me know how this chapter was and maybe I can get it posted ASAP as well!


	17. Chapter 17

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

A flash of blonde a few yards away snags her attention, and suddenly, that little moment between Caroline and Tyler comes hurtling back on top of her like a freight train.

Shit. She'd been totally distracted.

"So what's up with Tyler?" she asks casually as she sidles up to Caroline.

Caroline turns and raises both eyebrows. "Tyler?" she asks, for all the world distracted and flustered. "Did he say something to you?"

"You tell me."

Caroline laughs, but it's not her real laugh. "Oh, did you see us arguing back there?" She writes something on her clipboard. "He's trying to get out of a date he promised me, that's all."

Elena grabs Caroline's wrist. Looks around, makes sure Klaus isn't lingering anywhere nearby. "He's not… planning something, right?"

"Why would you think that?"

_Because I knows the crowd I run with_, she wants to snap.

"If there were something, you'd tell me, right?" she asks instead.

Caroline puts down her clipboard. "Nothing's going on. I promise."

"You know Klaus is here, right?"

"This again? He's just bringing me the painting he promised. _Late_, I might add." She pats her on the shoulder. "You shouldn't stress out so much. It can't be good for the baby."

"The baby's fine. I just need to make sure you and Tyler are."

"We're _totally _fine. _Better _than fine." Her eyes trail away from Elena, to a point behind her shoulder, and she pauses thoughtfully. Glances down at her schedule. "Actually, do you think you can man the auction table? I'm too busy putting out fires and I don't have the time I thought I would."

Elena frowns at her. "Yeah, sure—just—if something _is _happening, you'll let me know, right?"

"Yeah. Of course."

* * *

She watches from the auction tables as Caroline flirts shamelessly with Klaus over glasses of champagne.

Fires indeed.

She wonders if Caroline is doing this to distract Klaus from something or if she simply enjoys his company as much as she appears to.

She refuses to acknowledge the feeling roiling in her gut at the sight of their easy, companionable laughter. Klaus is never like that with her. But then, he never needs to worry when he raises his glass for a sip that Caroline has slipped him his death at the bottom of his glass.

And the worst part is that it's his _real_ smile which he flashes for Caroline, over and over—that smile Elena has only seen a bare handful of times, which Caroline apparently receives so _effortlessly_, with no strings attached. No wonder she'd fallen for him.

Klaus catches her watching them. Quirks his brow—a question, a challenge, who knows—before returning his attention to Caroline.

The sun gets low.

She cannot look away. Marks them doggedly as they take a slow circuit around the festival.

Elena's interrupted from her vigil by the mayor, tugging at her sleeve. "Elena, dear, are you listening?"

"Hm?"

"The auction winners, dear. I was hoping you could make the announcements."

"Oh, I'm not sure about that. I'm not really feeling very well—"

"It's just that your mother used to always do this, and I thought it would be nice for you to carry on the tradition as a founding daughter—"

Elena glances back, to where she had last seen Klaus and Caroline. They've both disappeared.

"Fine, yes, okay."

* * *

She lets Mayor Lockwood lead her to the stage.

On the steps leading up to the stage, Elena pauses. Frowns. "Why did you say you wanted me to do this again?" she shouts over the din of the live band wrapping up their set.

Mayor Lockwood smiles blandly up at her. "You're a founding daughter of the town. It's what's to be expected," she shouts back.

_Founding daughter._ She shakes her head. There's something familiar about that phrase, but what?

The mayor says something else, but Elena doesn't hear it as she turns the phrase over in her mind.

A vague memory tumbles loose.

_I'm a founding daughter of this town. The last of the Gilberts, thank you. _

Her heart clenches in her chest.

She clutches Mayor Lockwood's arms. "Who suggested I give the presentation?"

The mayor frowns, her expression a little misty, now that Elena knows to look for it. "I don't understand, dear."

Elena lets her go and searches the crowd.

Klaus had done this. She's certain of it. He'd engineered for her to be up on this stage at this particular time, stuck announcing the auction winners while he—what? Why did he need her up there? To get her out of the way, so she couldn't interfere? Or to get her up high, where she'd be forced to witness—? Her mind grapples blindly trying to fill in the blanks.

She sprints up to the top of the stage and scans the crowd. Races through possibilities as she searches. Whatever this set up is, it's got to involve someone she cares about—someone on her list he can use to hurt her. That's Klaus's M.O., right? Hurt him, he uses the ones you love to hurt you back?

Caroline, Tyler, and Matt are the only ones here—unless—a cold sweat breaks over her skin—unless the reason Bonnie hasn't been answering is that he's kidnapped her again? No, no, that doesn't make sense, no way he could be holding her for days on end—which means it's got to be one of the other three, right?

She doesn't see Tyler or Caroline _anywhere_, but her eyes lock onto Matt on the edge of the town green. Just an indistinct silhouette against the setting sun, but she would know him anywhere. He's carrying a crate, balancing it precariously as he looks both ways before crossing. Mid-step into the street, someone must call out to him, because he turns back.

Premonition screams through her blood. She knows what's going to happen before the car comes barreling around the corner, roaring through the red light.

Elena leaps from the stage and barrels through the crowd, shoving people out of the way as she sprints headlong toward the far end of the green, ignoring the way that people shout after her. Her lungs burn and her blood pounds in her ears, louder than the music, than the surprised screams of mothers and children as she charges past them. She breaks from the crowd in time to see Matt, prone on the ground, a slick puddle seeping out from under him with each passing second. Shattered glass litters the ground around him, from where the contents of the crate had gone airborne when the car struck him.

There's no car in sight.

The detail sticks in the back of her mind as she rushes to him, her hands hovering over him as she searches for something she can do to fix this—

But _fuck_, this is bad. There's blood everywhere, and she can't even figure out where it's coming from. It's like Matt is just one gaping wound—

Caroline appears out of nowhere and ducks down to Matt's side. "What happened?"

"He was hit—Care, I don't think he's going to make it—"

"Not if he gets taken to a hospital." Caroline looks around. "I'm moving him inside, so I can take care of this. Help me cover."

Elena nods. Turns back to the members of the crowd who are starting to gather. "Everything's fine!" She calls. "It looks much worse than it was!" She forces a laugh. "Must be a Christmas miracle!"

It's literally the stupidest lie she's ever come up with—no one could look at the ocean of blood on the street and believe it.

Except, this is Mystic Falls, and she's wholesome Elena Gilbert, and everyone knows her. No one would ever suspect her.

* * *

She doesn't wait to find out if anyone's willing to put two and two together today, rushing inside the closed Grill hot on Caroline's heels, slamming the lock on the front doors behind her.

By the time she's turning around, Matt's already sitting up near the bar, rubbing blood out of his eyes.

"What happened?" he asks.

Right now, Elena doesn't care that they'd been fighting just this morning. Doesn't care that he's drenched in blood. She throws her arms around him and holds on tight.

After a moment, he returns the embrace. "Seriously, what happened?" he asks as he pulls away.

"You got hit by a car?" Caroline supplies.

Matt shakes his head and mutters that he can't remember any of that, while Elena works furiously over the events of the past few minutes.

The timing of Matt's accident. The hit and run driver. Why put her up on stage? To witness, or to hold her up?

"Matt. Are you on vervain?" she asks.

"Yeah, of course."

"You drink it, every day?"

"Well, no, I have a bracelet—" He holds up a bare wrist.

All three of them stare and stare.

_Fuck. _Fuck fuck fuck.

She'd _known _Klaus was up to something. She'd _known it_, all week, and yet she'd never thought—

He'd compelled Matt. Probably yesterday, when he stopped by the Grill. She clenches her jaw, seeing Matt's third degree this morning in a totally different light.

Except, she'd seen Klaus talking to the mayor _days _ago. Setting this—this—this whatever it was supposed to be up. Making sure she'd be up on that stage. But what for? To watch Matt _die_? Had he lined this up, some kind of preemptive revenge in case she turned him down? But how could he have known she would?

None of it makes sense.

"When did your bracelet go missing?" Caroline asks. "Elena, what's going on?"

Elena stands up. "Have you seen Klaus?" He's the one piece missing from this puzzle. Why would he do all of this and then not even show up to watch her suffer?

Caroline pauses for a damningly long minute before she responds, "I think we're going to need a drink for this." She marches around to the bar and selects a bottle of Jack.

Everything about the way she does it reads _guilty wrong guilty._

"What? Caroline, _where's Klaus?_" Elena repeats.

* * *

"Remember how I told you nothing was going on?" Caroline takes a shot. "Well, I lied!" She says it in just the way she would say _ta-da! _

Matt rubs at his face and slumps at the bar. "I have _no _idea what's going on."

"What do you mean you _lied?_ _Where is he?" _

Caroline frowns at the intensity in Elena's voice. "The coup's happening tonight. Tyler's friend Hayley found a witch to do that body-swapping spell Klaus likes so much, except this time, he's going to get swapped into Tyler's body… and buried in concrete."

"What? That's insane—I asked you earlier—"

"I know, and we decided to keep you out of it, okay? You get so—so keyed up about him, so frightened, and so Tyler and I thought it would be better if you just didn't know." Caroline takes another drink. "Tyler's sacrificing himself so the others can escape." She sounds equally furious and aggrieved.

Buried in concrete. "How long?"

Caroline doesn't answer.

Long, then.

A wave of dizziness closes in on her. That's it, then. He really will be cut out of her life.

She's getting what she asked for.

Wishes coming true.

"Where are they?" She doesn't even recognize her voice when she speaks. It feels like the words are coming from someone else.

"The sun's set, Elena. I think it's probably already done."

"I have to go," Elena mumbles, hurrying from the bar, ignoring the way that both Caroline and Matt call after her. Neither of them follow her, though.

* * *

Already done.

He may as well be dead.

To her, for all practical purposes, he is.

The tears burst from her before she even makes it to the green, scalding tracks down her cheeks as she stumbles through the debris of the disbursing crowd.

She's such an idiot. Crying over _Klaus, _like she can't read his fingerprints all over what happened to Matt tonight, like she hasn't been in a state all week worrying over him and trying to find ways to push him away. All because there's this knot buried at the center of her chest that she just can't untie, no matter how hard she picks at it.

And she cries harder because she knows she'll get over this loss, just like every other.

She's Elena Gilbert. Death has no hold over her.

* * *

And when Klaus emerges, years down the line, she'll just be a memory. He'll think back on their last conversation—how she told him he'd meant nothing to her—and—and—

And that will be how their story really ends.

And that'll be fine.

* * *

She won't even let herself think about Tyler just yet.

* * *

She huddles up by the empty auction tables and watches all of the happy families leave the festival.

_That'll be me in a few years,_ she tells herself. _I won't even remember this then._

It's a pretty lie. Her favorite kind.

* * *

It's late when she finally stands, her body numb from the cold, especially in the places where Matt's blood had soaked through her dress and turned icy.

The only people still about are Mayor Lockwood, seated on the lip of the fountain, cellphone in hand, and a lone figure approaching from the other side of the green.

Elena frowns as the figure draws closer.

Recognition seizes over her, flooding her with relief sharp as the knife she'd stabbed herself with last spring.

"Klaus!" She's calling his name before she knows what she's doing. Running toward him without even thinking about it.

If there's something disturbing about his slow, deliberate gait as he drifts toward Mayor Lockwood, she doesn't register it until she's already careening into him, hands reaching out to catch at his arms.

"Klaus, you're okay," she pants, her hands roving over him.

He blinks down at her, as though noticing her for the first time.

There's a look of such raw anguish on his face that it strips Elena down to the bone. Scours away the last of her defenses against him.

Pity stirs her heart. And with it, an unfurling softness.

The moment stretches long as they take each other in.

Klaus's gaze sharpens upon her. He steps out of her reach. "Tell me where your friend Tyler Lockwood is hiding," he demands, his voice low and steady like the roll of a drum. It dawns on her that he's absolutely _covered _in blood and gore. She

"I don't know. I haven't seen him in hours."

He nods, like he's not surprised.

"Your hybrids. You killed all of them, didn't you?" She should be horrified. Instead, she's just glad that Tyler had escaped.

He closes his eyes, briefly. "Yes." Somehow, covered in the blood of the _family_ he'd attempted to create for himself, he looks even lonelier and sadder to her than usual.

She's unprepared for how deeply the sight of him like this moves her.

She also knows what it's like, to be completely alone. To be so sad that each breath _aches_.

"I had no idea what they were planning."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does, though." Tentatively, she reaches out, and when Klaus doesn't pull away again, she threads her arms around him and holds him close to her. He doesn't return the embrace, but he doesn't shove her away, either. "I'm so glad that you're okay," she confesses into his sodden dress shirt.

He doesn't respond, but the words seem to seep into him, little by little. Slowly, Klaus's arms come up around her and draw her close against him.

* * *

She stays with him the whole night.

* * *

A/N: YUP. Thanks for reading.


	18. Chapter 18

**(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas

* * *

By the time she pulls away from his embrace, they're the only two left on the town green. The clean up is scheduled for bright and early the next morning—her name is on the list, and it's fully possible that she will show up to help despite the hard stone of anger she feels for Caroline for keeping this monumental thing secret from her—but for now, the lights are still up, strung between trees and booths and decorative arches, and so there are twice as many stars in the sky as usual when Elena takes hold of Klaus's hand and leads him to sit with her by the fountain.

"Why are you here?" he asks her after a few more minutes have trickled by, the splashing of the fountain the only sound louder than their breaths.

"Don't you need me to be?"

He leans back and looks up at the inky smear of the night sky.

She looks with him.

"I thought you didn't care." He says it so lightly she could almost believe that her answer doesn't matter to him. That's his tell, though. For when he cares more than anything.

"I was lying."

She can feel him turn to her. Can feel the weight of his evaluation, quieter and heavier, somehow, than it was before. She has the uncomfortable feeling that the incident in the woods with the hybrids has peeled back another layer, revealed Klaus to be this somber, exhausted creature, grievously wounded, that only pretends to be so carelessly cruel, so frenetically cheerful.

The sight of him stalking toward Carol Lockwood flashes through her thoughts, and she has to swallow down the sudden lump in her throat. No, not really _carelessly_ cruel at all… but cruel, still, all the same. It's in his nature.

She doesn't care.

She should. She _knows _that she should. But—

She just. Can't find it in herself to leave him. Not now. Not like this.

_(She wishes, even once, that there had been someone who had refused to leave _her_.) _

"Were you?" he asks her quietly. "You were utterly convincing, earlier today."

"I was lying to myself too. I—You were right. We do have something between us." She twists her hands. Frets with her bloodied dress that is in likelihood stained beyond repair. "I can't help it that that scares me."

A long time goes by before he speaks, Klaus watching her while she looks anywhere but at him.

"I forgive you," he tells her at length, gravely serious.

That answer—so very _Klaus_—should rile her, but her pride has no place here tonight.

That's why she tells him, before the mood between them shifts, and she loses her nerve, "I have something else I have to tell you."

He waits silently for her to go on, with an air of patience more ancient than the uncut primordial forests out by the falls, more abiding than stone and colder than the deepest waters.

"The thing about this pregnancy—the thing about it is—well—" She falters. Regathers her courage. "The thing about it is that there is no father."

"You mean to say that it's the result of a passing dalliance," he reasons slowly.

"No. I mean… this pregnancy is sort of supernatural. As in, there _literally _isn't a father."

"You're joking."

"I'm completely, utterly, one thousand percent serious."

His expression falls completely slack. She has the feeling that if she had told him this any other day, he would have laughed at her, but tonight, now, when he is so very drained, it's all he can do to stare at her in blank bewilderment.

His response eats at her nerves. "Klaus, say something."

"What you're suggesting's just not possible. Takes two lives to create a new one. That's just how the Balance goes."

"But I'm the doppelganger."

"So?"

"So normal rules about Balance and Nature don't apply to me. And it seems to me like what Nature _really _requires of me is that my line continue, no matter what, so there can be another one of me in 500 years. Hence: supernatural pregnancy for a supernatural being."

"The curse has been broken. The conditions that led to your line's creation have already been met. There's no need for such loopholes."

"And yet I'm still supernatural."

"This never happened to Katerina."

"Are you positive? How would you know?"

He scrubs his bloody hands over his face. The movement leaves a trail of red behind. "Say I do believe what you're saying. Why are you telling me this now? Why not last week, when first I asked? Did it amuse you, to watch me chase after a rival that may not exist?"

"I can't go on being enemies with you like this, Klaus. I just… An hour ago I thought you were dead. And now you're not, and I don't want to keep going on like this with you, over an issue that doesn't even exist."

He sighs. "Fair enough."

* * *

They watch the moon rise together.

* * *

"I don't understand what you were trying to do with Matt," she tells him later, as she picks out constellations.

"Is he dead?" He sounds merely_ mildly_ curious, as though the answer doesn't really matter to him one way or another.

She glances at him. Looks away. "Is he supposed to be?"

He shrugs. "I hadn't decided yet."

"He's fine. Caroline was there." She fidgets with her coat buttons. "What do you mean, _you hadn't decided? _What were you planning?" It doesn't really matter, she supposes. All's well that ends well. And yet… she can't stop wondering what Klaus had hoped to accomplish with that little stunt earlier.

"Either to let him bleed out while you watched or to save him for you. I've been back and forth for days on which it would be. Was distracted, in the end, so it all comes to nothing, I suppose."

"If you were trying to impress me by saving him, it wouldn't have worked. I saw through your scheme before I ever took the stage."

"Clever girl. Were you very angry with me?"

"No." The truth falls from her lips before she can wonder if it would be wiser to not to give it.

This admission thaws something in Klaus that had been cold and hard since she'd found him. She can feel the intensity of his interest ratchet up like a sunburn on her skin as he drawls, "How disappointing. I thought you cared for your friend more than that."

If Klaus had been withdrawn and unhappy before, all of that recedes under the force of what Elena recognizes faintly to be a wild and fierce excitement kindling within him.

She shakes her head, flustered. "No, it's just—I knew something was wrong as soon as I got there, and I couldn't find you. You would _never _set something like that in motion without showing up to watch it play out. And then I heard…" She trails off, not quite willing to name names in front of him.

"My demise must've been a relief," Klaus muses.

"It wasn't."

"You've been trying to kill me for months now, off and on." He says it _so fondly._

"I've told you my heart was never in it."

"No, you told me you didn't have a heart."

"That's not true."

"So what is your heart, then, Elena?"

She dares to glance up at him from beneath her lashes. Finds herself transfixed by the hungry, intent way he looks at her as he waits for her response. Notes that unmistakable spark of hope burning in him, brighter, brighter still as he marks her reaction to him.

She takes a deep breath. Recollects herself. The cold from the fountain radiates into her back, a solid wall of ice that seeps into her, keeps her grounded in this moment.

"That depends," Elena says. "Are you going to keep threatening my friends?"

"Can you truly call them your friends?"

"What about my child?"

He frowns at her. "You know that I wouldn't."

"Swear it."

"Will you answer me if I do?"

"Klaus—"

In a trice he has taken her hand and gotten down on one knee in front of her. His voice drops down into a formal register as he vows, "I swear unto you that I will neither harm nor ever allow harm to befall your child, through action or inaction, else let me be stricken down on the instant." He holds her gaze the entire time he speaks, even when he takes hold of her hands and presses his mouth against it.

Fever races over her skin at the touch. She draws her hand back sharply.

"You didn't think I would be willing to do that," Klaus observes. "And yet, it seems to me that you've driven a bad bargain, if you thought this would get you out of answering."

"I just don't understand where you think this is _going_. I get that you're attracted to me, and that maybe if things were different, we could have a shot. But I'm having a _baby_, Klaus."

"Maybe I haven't made myself clear. I'm not merely _attracted _to you."

"Okay, you have _feelings _for me—"

"I'm in love with you."

The words stun her. "That's not possible."

"Would that that were true."

Elena stands up and backs away from him. His eyes trace her every step.

"Klaus, that's insane."

"Is it?"

"Besides, what would you do with a baby? You won't want to be with me in six months when I've gained thirty pounds and I'm _waddling_, let alone when I have a toddler clinging to me—"

"I've raised a child as my own before."

Elena pauses, all of the gears in her head grinding to a halt. "What?"

"I had a ward once. A boy I raised as my own. I'm not daunted by the task. If that's part of what it would take to have you, then I accept that."

"You were mad with jealousy about this pregnancy mere hours ago."

"That was over the putative lover—never over the child itself. If there truly is no father, then you have no need to worry," he rejoins smoothly, rising to his feet with leonine grace and stalking toward her. He cups her face. "Tell me what's in your heart, Elena."

She squeezes her eyes shut. "I can't."

"Tell me."

"I'm afraid."

His fingers stroke over her jaw. Trail possessively down to the scars he'd left upon her throat. "There's no need for that. I could be good to you."

"You hurt me so much last fall."

"I thought I could shut you out of my life if I simply willed it strongly enough. I was a fool."

"I can't just forget that."

"I'll make you forget."

"I don't love you," she whispers, opening her eyes.

He brushes aside her tears. "You will, though."

"How can you know that?"

"Because we're inevitable, you and I. Fated." He sounds so _certain_.

"That's ridiculous."

"I'll prove it to you."

"How?"

"By loving you."

"Lots of people have loved me. That never stops them from leaving me."

"I came back, did I not?" he asks her, all seriousness.

She nods, lets him pull her close, into the sheltering embrace of his body wrapped around her own.

She doesn't know if that's enough for her.

* * *

He takes her back to his house, and she lets him. She lets him lead her upstairs, into his bedroom. Lets him sit her down on the edge of his bed. Lets him kneel down to take her shoes off. Peel off her ruined dress and running tights and lay her down into the soft and inviting warmth of his bed. Lets him treat her well.

And God, she's too tired, too emotionally wrung out, to say no when he kisses her. When his hands stroke over her sides, her breasts. She's dreamt about his kisses and his caresses for months now, longed with painful regret for the feeling of his mouth upon her skin, her throat, her sex. It's so easy, to turn off all of her many, many valid reasons to protest this and instead to part her thighs for him, to soak in the way he murmurs pet names against her flesh as he tastes her and tastes her, his mouth unspooling her until she is left with nothing but the terrifying crater of her yearning for him.

She cries out his name when she comes. Cries harder after, the tears streaming down her flushed face as all of her pent-up feelings for Klaus, so carefully contained and hidden away where she hardly had to ever look at them, come spilling out in unstoppable, full-body tremors.

Her lover takes no pity on her. Watches her tears fall with a sort of intense, mesmerized scrutiny, only to lick them from her chin, her throat, her collarbone. He bites her before she really understands what's happening, the sear of his teeth piercing her throat sudden and acute. It's an animal bite, a claiming bite.

She thrashes against him even as she drags him closer. Feels his hand at her knee just before he pushes her back, drives inside of her in one smooth stroke that feels like too much too soon despite her orgasm. Maybe that's just how it's going to be with him. Maybe it will always feel like too much. Maybe what's between them is like an exposed nerve, quivering in ecstatic agony every time they let themselves brush against it.

When Klaus pulls back from her throat to kiss her mouth, it's with the copper tang of her blood on his lips. She splays her fingers against his breast, feels his heart slamming wildly against his chest, and kisses him back.

* * *

After, she tells him again, "I don't love you."

Klaus traces a path from her navel to her hip with his finger, marking the way she shivers at his touch. Smiles at her knowingly. "Not yet."

* * *

A/N: I haven't checked this over… so… we die like men, I guess.

Thanks so much for the mountains of reviews, guys- Your love for this little fic is motivating me so hard to keep the updates rolling. I'm just... so floored by the response this is getting.


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